Korean Things I Have Eaten - Seoul Trip Edition

Welcome to the second edition of Korean Things I Have Eaten. I bet you sure are glad you've continued to read this blog! 

We caught the train up to Suwon last Friday to hand out with our friends before a boat trip in Incheon on Saturday. As we were planning on eating dinner in Suwon when we arrived (about 8:30pm) I needed a little something to take the edge off the hunger.

Korean train food is comprised mostly of chips, biscuits and dried squid. One day I'll be brave enough to sample the squid for you but last Friday was not that day, so I got these instead:

I can read the hangul but Google Translate can't translate it. Best I got is 'After Heine rangkeu'.

They're little frankfurters which you unwrap by pulling the red plastic on one side, like so:

The franks taste like those little sausages you get in cans of Watties Spaghetti, but without delicious tomato sauce flavouring. Tom describes these as 'revolting' but I think they're passable and they can't be worse than the squid. 

What goes well with small frankfurters? Beer of course! Korea is delightfully lax about when and where you can drink which is still entertaining to us 8 months on.

Fast-forward to the next morning, and we were heading into Seoul for a day of eating Western food and then the boat cruise. Tom bought some samgak (triangle) gimbap (Korean sushi) for breakfast and we got some of the famous Korean 'service.' 

You know how in New Zealand, sometimes you buy a magazine and you get a free sample of face cream or sometimes you hit the jackpot and you get a lip gloss or something? Korea has taken this to another level and sometimes a weird level. Service extends from make-up shops - where with my purchase of three $1 nail polishes I got face cream, mascara and a huge box of cotton wipes, to the supermarket - bonus bowl with my cereal? Yes please! - to the ajosshi I buy our oranges from, who toss in a few for free saying 'serbis-see!' as an explanation. We got enough 'service' washing powder from our first trip to the supermarket in August that we only ran out yesterday.  

Nabbed from www.roketship.com, this one is great too!

Anyway, we got comped a few drinks with Tom's gimbap and as he didn't want them they were handed over to me. The first is Lotte's The Dream of Tea.

I didn't actually drink this until later in the evening, when I'd been served a particularly strong vodka and soda and was grappling around in my bag for something to cut it with. It's a mildly sweet Ceylon iced tea, and as I love iced tea like I love trying weird food in Korea, I utterly recommend it. Good for mixing too. 

The next one is Milkis, the new feeling of soda beverage:

Our friend Lauren tried this a few months ago and proclaimed it to be disgusting, so I avoided it for ages until curiosity attacked me and wrestled me to the ground. I love it! It's a milky-flavoured soft drink which probably sounds revolting, but it tastes a lot like a spider or float or whatever your region calls it when you mix carbonated beverages with ice cream and then drink it. It also comes in iceblock form for the super cheap price of 200 won (25c) from the dairy near our apartment. 

Until next time, 맛있어요!