All seems beautiful to me,
can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me
I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

A friend sent me this link just at a moment when I was ripe to read these beautiful words and share in the joy of travel. It’s been a long week with many complications and a surfeit of politics and issues but there have definitely been some high points, notably a delightful evening that just ended.
One of the fascinating, and often frustrating, bits of being in another country is the food. Particularly if that country has culinary habits and traditions which are completely alien to your own. To be honest, in Korea, I have eaten mostly Western food, cooked by me in my flat, with the occasional trip to a restaurant with friends, and once Vietnamese noodles. In the past couple of days, I’ve been exposed (thanks to a colleague with excellent taste) to some local food.

The first experience was Wednesday evening when we popped up the road from the school to grab a bite to eat. We work rather odd hours – 3pm to 11pm(ish), so dinner tends to be a rather haphazard affair grabbed in breaks between classes and in free periods, or delayed until the end of work. On this occasion, we had limited time, so we went somewhere close. I wasn’t really hungry, but this colleague is on a mission to expose me to some local food (and feels that I don’t eat enough), so he ordered way too much on the grounds that I would have to try some if it was there. We went to a place that makes Mandoo. The shop/restaurant opens onto the pavement and I walk past it every time I go to the bus stop and have been secretly fascinated by the place billowing steam onto the pavement. Of course, I had no idea what it was and didn’t bother to ask in between the many new things I wanted explanations for. It turns out it sells a Korean food that is described in some of the literature as ‘Korean dumplings’. This may be a little misleading to those who are used to dumplings being bits of dough added to stews. In fact, Mandoo are parcels of meat, vegetables, rice and/or fish wrapped in a thin layer of dough. Sometimes they are served in a beef broth (mandoo-guk), but often they’re fried or steamed (hence the billows of steam). The bit I tasted was a pork, rice and vegetable parcel in dough, steamed. Minced pork is not always particularly attractive as a food but it worked really well in this case. The vegetables were spring onions, I think, and mixed up with the rice and pork, and worked really well. It wasn’t all plain sailing – the dumplings were rather large and complicated to cut up with chopsticks, or to eat whole with chopsticks (which probably indicates a deficiency in my ability with chopsticks rather than a problem with the food). A good snack, though, although I’m told this wasn’t a very good example of Mandoo. In my inexperience, I wasn’t complaining at all.

Wednesday had originally been intended to start with an adventure in local food but work complications got in the way, so the adventure was shifted to Friday, when we had to be at the office early (2pm), so three of us headed off today to a lunch of Korean food. I was running late, partly because I felt the need to shop after I eventually woke up and partly because of misunderstanding of instructions on my part, but I eventually got to the school, where we all hopped into a colleague’s car and headed off to one of the large department stores in Daegu. I was a little unsure of exactly what to expect, but new places, especially with the security of people who you know, are always a good option. The restaurant was on the 11th floor of the building. Part of me is still a small-town Eastern Cape girl not used to very tall buildings. Also, I don’t like elevators, so, having parked in the basement 3 (-3F) level, the elevator ride was not exactly super-fun. When we eventually arrived on the floor we were looking for and found the restaurant, we had to wait about two minutes and then headed for the table. My colleagues ordered, of course – I am nowhere near knowing enough to order – and the food arrived with remarkable speed. Korean food tends to be of the many-side-dishes-around-one-central-bowl type, which I’m still getting used to after English-type meat-and-three-veg meals most of my life. The serving of this meal began with the waitress bringing each of us two bowls of soup, followed by many side dishes and then the central part of the meal, Bibimbap (I think) – literally ‘mixed rice’, a bowl with rice topped with a variety of vegetables and, in this case, tiny strips of seasoned raw beef, which is all mixed together like (my colleague’s analogy not mine) tossed salad. And eaten with a spoon. I, of course, made the faux pas of trying to eat it with chopsticks before someone gently (and only laughing at me a little) corrected me. The dish has a variety of vegetables including (but by no means limited to) spinach (yay!), bean sprouts and beans of some sort. It was quite delicious and definitely not a taste I’m familiar with. Side dishes ranged from fried tiny fish (which tasted extremely fishy), kimchi (vinigery and hot) and fermented soy-bean soup, to pumpkin fritter (or something Koreanly similar – definitely pumpkin). My Korean-American colleague also tried to teach me to use chopsticks, unsuccessfully – the lack of success being a reflection of my ineptitude rather than his instruction.

On the way back to the car, we stopped for a moment on the grocery level. I’m still getting used to department stores but there seem to be levels for every type of bought good imaginable, each section with it’s own check-out point. In the food section, I was momentarily sidetracked by the cheeses. Since getting here I have been singularly disappointed by the cheese, so I was thrilled to see something other than plastic-tasting, processed, gouda-like pale-yellow stuff. They actually had Brie and Camembert. At which point I was further sidetracked by the fact that the Brie and Camembert claimed to be Danish. It appears Koreans are under the impression that all good dairy products come from Denmark. I have no idea where this impression comes from but it was confirmed by a colleague (who also couldn’t explain it). I wonder if the French know that the Koreans think Denmark invented their cheeses? There was also a wine section but, alas, no South African wines.

At this point we headed back to the school and began a long day of work. My day was less tiresome than my colleagues because Fridays are my good day – when I finish at 21:30 instead of after 10pm. This evening, I popped in to say goodbye to a colleagues and was persuaded to stick around with the promise of dinner and a few drinks after work. I sat in on the colleague’s last class. It was informative and somewhat reassuring to see that he runs his classes the same way I do (we teach various classes at the same level), although it’s easy to see how much more experienced he is in this field. After class we waited around while others were working on something else and eventually decided to give up on them and head off.

By this stage I was tired. A night-time life is fine but my body still notices when it’s after 11pm and I was feeling a little like it was time to head home. My colleague (my lift home) was hungry, however, so we headed to one of his favourite restaurants. It turned out to be a delightful corner of Western civilization in the middle of Asia. The restaurant is near to the lake I explored last weekend (was it only last weekend?) and just a few doors down from the almost equally marvellous Africa Café, where we had the most delicious African coffee and honey bread (while talking about work, of course) just the other day. Honey-bread, by the way, is a half-loaf of fresh white bread drizzled with honey, sprinkled with nuts and baked for just long enough to warm it in the oven. Daniel’s Story One is a whole different level of civilised.

I’ve been glad, since I arrived, to discover that there are several places in the city to find steak. I still never expected to find really good steak in Korea. I was wrong. I had steak in a red wine sauce and my colleague had rib-eye steak with mushroom risotto (real risotto so the Italians tell me). In typical Korean fashion, the starters and coffees/desserts (though they’re not great at desserts) come free with the main course. The starter was a cream of broccoli soup (we think), which was good. The steak was fantastic. Perfectly medium-rare, soft as butter and tasty and rich, just the way it should be. With the meal, we ordered a reasonably-priced French Pinot Noir. I was a little dubious about ordering something called ‘Hobnob Pinot Noir (2007)’ but it turned out to be very pleasing and a great accompaniment to the steak. The setting suited the civilised nature of the meal – white table-cloths, with gentle pinky-purple place-mats, and proper silverware and glassware, in a place with many water-features and a few plants and (possibly fake) branches of peach blossoms tastefully arranged. The music was also lovely – the type of gentle, classical, background music that makes such a lovely change from the incessant Korean pop which blares forth in most surroundings. When you sit down at a Korean restaurant – another thing I’m still getting used to – they immediately bring you glasses of water and there are always unexpected and free side-dishes, such as, in this case, a variety of pickles and bread, which form a lovely accompaniment to the meal. To end of the feast of luxury, my friend had a chocolate mousse and iced coffee/milkshake and I had a perfectly civilised coffee. The mousse (yes, I tasted it of course) was oddly watery, while simultaneously being bitter, but the coffee was good. We spent ages over the meal and the desserts, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere and good conversation, before eventually heading home. It wasn’t until we got to the car that I realised it was 2am. I suppose one advantage of becoming nocturnal (a reality of a foreign teacher’s life here) is that late nights no longer seem a bother, but this was definitely also also just one of those evenings when you don’t even notice that time has passed.

As wonderful as it is to try new things and experience new flavours, there is little to compare to the pleasantly familiar luxury of a place like Daniel’s, particularly when there is good steak and red wine and good conversation. I’ll definitely be returning, probably with the same friend. I never thought I’d find a place quite as civilised and Western in my random Asian country but it feels a little good to know that I may just have found my favourite Western restaurant in all of Daegu.