Chocolate Love

Oddly enough the first thing people asked me to try in Korea is chocolate.

Forget about kimchi, bulgogi and rice cakes. Supposedly Pepero chocolate-coated cookie sticks are the must-buy items over there.



Obviously once you've seen the scrumptious food porn video above, you'd disagree. After all even the caddish scamp in the drama Fermentation Family couldn't remain impervious to the irresistible charm of mouthwatering kimchi laid out like an artful masterpiece in front of him. 
Though I do crave a bit of healthy kimchi every once in a while, that's nothing compared to my rapacious lust for bulgogi and sam-gyeopsal. Basically greasy meat grilled on a dome griddles on braziers. Shockingly heaty especially with the amount of soju and makgeolli I downed. 
BTW makgeolli is a locally brewed milky rice wine that goes down surprisingly easy. Which is why I had at least a bottle a day :)

What should I have for lunch next? 

To avoid having my yin-yang spinning dangerously out of whack with the amount of heaty food I was happily ingesting, I interspersed my carnivorous delights with the occasional nourishing porridge break. Yes, we had our slow-food juk almost every morning as we walked down the street from the guesthouse, since there was a store selling just that on the way to the train station. Unlike the porridge we're all used to, the Koreans toss in pine nuts, octopus, pumpkin and kimchi into the mix. Just to name a few.


Though curiously they don't have century eggs. Surely it couldn't be that exotic to the diet-adventurous Koreans.