One day at school, the French teacher came to my office and randomly invited me to lunch. It was so sweet, especially because I usually eat lunch alone. She told me that we would be going to a traditional Korean restaurant.
At traditional Korean restaurants, everyone takes off their shoes before they enter and sits on the floor around the table. Most meals in Korea are served as shared dishes. Usually, there are side dishes that everyone shares in the center of the table, and then some sort of meat, noodle or rice dish that is cooked at the table. I was so excited when I heard we were going to eat dumpling noodle soup!
I tried Kalkugsu (knife-cut noodles). This version also has local vegetables, rice cakes, squid and mandu (dumplings).
It was SO delicious! The dumplings were very filling. The stew was a little spicy (thankfully, I love spicy food!). The squid was super chewy! This is one of my favorite dishes I've had in South Korea. It was a little tricky to eat it with chopsticks, though. You are supposed to use chopsticks to pick up the noodles and put them on a spoon before eating them, but they were really slippery! I was a little embarrassed since I was with my Korean coworkers.
