A few months ago I went with a ‘friend’ to
Gwangjang Market in Seoul. It’s a pretty standard market with a huge array of
Korean delicacies, of which I tried some of them. All the food that we ate was washed down with beer and soju - it's the Korean way.
One of the more normal dishes I tried at Gwangjang was
yukhoe. Yukhoe is seasoned raw ground beef topped with a raw egg, or as it’s
more commonly known in other countries as ‘E.coli topped with salmonella’. The
taste was uninspiring, I tried to explain to the waiter that both ingredients
tasted better when cooked, but there must have been a language barrier. I read
after I had eaten it that in 2011, 5 Japanese people died and 35 were hospitalised after
eating yukhoe. Jamie Oliver can say what he likes about the standard of school
dinners in the UK, but 10 years of eating Turkey Twizzlers probably saved my
life. My stomach could probably fight off a pint of bleach without much hassle.
Some men like breast, others like legs, but the foot fetish
guys are always the weirdest – and the same applies for chicken. Dakbal, as it’s
known in Korea, is a dish of spicy chicken feet. The look and sound horrific
but in actuality they taste OK. The initial thought of popping one in your
mouth is the worst part, but my question is ‘why bother?’ When there are so
many better parts to eat; a succulent breast, a tender thigh, I was struggling
to think of a reason to eat chewy, meatless feet. It was an experience that I
shall not repeat.
The waste not, want not culture of Korean food doesn’t stop
with chicken feet, the Koreans also enjoy jokbal which is a dish consisting of
pig trotters cooked in soy sauce. I tried this dish in Gwangjang Market and it
left me unfulfilled. Friends had told me prior that it was delicious, a delight
not to be missed. Well, what I ate was disgusting. It was extremely tough to
chew, pretty much all skin, and served cold. I was told after that this is not how
it should have been served. So I’ve literally experienced the worst kind of
jokbal available. 
Beondegi is a dish that I haven’t been brave enough to try.
The main reason being that beondegi is silkworms and they smell exactly as you’d
imagine a steamed bowl of silkworms would smell. Fucking rank. It’s another
case of ‘why?’ I’m sure that when food supplies were scarce you had to make do
with what food was available, but nowadays Korea has one of the strongest
economies in the world. Even Bear Grylls would turn his nose up at beondegi.
And, probably by far, the most commonly known food to come from Korea, is of course dog soup (bosintang). There is a lot of controversy regarding the consumption of dog meat, and many state that it is technically illegal to eat. So, for the record I definitely did not eat bosintang on the 23rd February around 4pm, but if a fictional person in Korea were to go to a restaurant and eat bosintang it might look like this (right).If one were to eat it, they might say that it tastes like low grade beef, and that it's as chewy as a piece of leather, and that it's likely that they'll pick it out of their teeth for a week. But, who actually knows? That's just the imaginary opinion of a fictitious person.
I won't be rushing out to get another bowl anytime soon...I mean that person won't be rushing out. But, as the saying goes "it could be worse, you could be Scouse, eating rats in your council house".
I'm just reporting on this, but leave me alone with your pet at your own risk.
