Our first Sunday night in Gwangju. We wanted dinner. We wanted something simple and cheap. Five minutes down the road, we spotted a Korean restaurant. We entered and were briskly welcomed by staff who automatically plonked down some water and a few sides of pickles. Looking at the menu on the wall, we realised we had no idea what to order. Luckily a drunk Korean guy stepped up to help us.
Introducing himself to us and asking lots of personal questions about us, he finally turned to food. What would we like? ‘God only knows’ we thought looking at the scribbly Korean characters on the wall. I slowly tried to read the first and shortest word on the menu. Wrong thing to do. He picked up on the word I was trying to read which was incidentally ‘Changa’ in romanized format. ‘Yes!’ he shouted excitedly, ‘yes, good choice!’ He went on to order us two of them, plus sides and finally two rice each.
Now we just had to wait. Sides just kept coming. More and more and more. Salads, pickles, fish cakes, cabbage, kimchi, weird balls of stuff…what was the actual main we thought?! Whilst waiting the waiter stalked our way with a colander of live fish flapping about under his hand. I froze thinking he was heading at me with them. Luckily, he shot past me to the table behind me who had a hot bbq grill ready and waiting. With aplomb he threw the live fish into the pan and the whole restaurant heard the sizzle! Again, we thought, ‘what is our main’?
Finally, it came out. Two long grey lengths of fish were laid down on the burning hot stone grill in front of us. The silver skin simmered as the long gutted fish lay there cooking. Eel. Who would have thought on entering that this would be our simple Sunday night meal? The eel was cooked and then chopped into manageable chunks and lettuce leaves were brought over. In typical Korean style, which we didn’t know too well at the time, we added the eel to a lettuce leaf we held in our hand, added pepper sauce and other sides and then ate it all in one. It was yummy. Not something I would have predicted. The drunk guy wouldn’t leave us alone once the Eel came. ‘How is it?’, ‘Mmm?’, ‘Give me your number’ – which my boyfriend did. He even drop called him to check it was the real number. Luckily, the English phone number didn’t work in Korea. Score!
We left the restaurant full and pretty surprised. We were 60 dollars worse off and wondering if we would have food poisoning on our first day of school. Even so, we were happily bemused, knowing we’d left with a story to tell. Until we saw the other Eel’s in the tank out the front. Long, black fish squirming about like blood-sucking leeches. My stomach turned slightly as we walked away praying for the day we had data and google translate on our phones.