Korean Food Is Delicious

..... for Korean People.......But not to me.

I can honestly say there is no Korean food like except maybe ginger beef BBQ (Saeng gang kalvee) and a tasty chocolate and coffee icecream bar.

For me eating in Korea is a big problem, the food is usually spicey or salty or it's so bland it just tastes like paper.

But I don't eat salt or spicey food.
I don't eat salt, because it's bad for your health and I avoid spicey food, because I like to be able to taste the food. Actually some of it tastes disgusting : fishy things like fish soup, kim(seaweed) and silkworm pupis Yuk !

One thing is it's a different planet, people think and feel in a completely different way. The eating customs are completely different... people sit on chairs around a table and each have a plate with all their food on, they have knives and forks and eat in courses ..soup, main, dessert

The tastes are completely different. Koreans often tell me that persimmon (Kam) is delicious, but to me it has no taste at all. Same with the Korean pears and peaches, they swear they're the tastiest in the world, but to me they have very little flavour to pears and peaches in other countries. So the foods that taste disgusting to me, taste delicious to Koreans. And I bet some of the western things like chocolate and sugar taste disgusting to them.

Koreans have a different
attitude towards food.
For me it's simple you feel hungry so you eat then your stomach is full. Then you don't feel hungry and you continue working or whatever. Maybe sometimes after the meal you eat something sweet like cake or rice pudding or chocolate and this tastes great. But for most Koreans it's different every meal is a social ritual experience even breakfast. In England I never eat breakfast with other people. Get up, get dressed, eat some cereal with milk and wash the plate and go to work it's all over in 10 minutes. Many people in England don't even eat any breakfast and I prefer to get up and work for an hour or 2 first if I can.

In England you have your own plate. You eat what's on in then you've finished. Each Korean meal seems to last an hour or so. Maybe cos the whole process is slower; you have all the common little dishes in the centre of the table and you are eating with chopsticks.

Korean people eat a lot compared to western people. But western food has a lot of calories. A lot of Korean food consists of pickles and pickles take more energy to digest than they contain.

OK I don't like the food, but I hope Korea does not change to become like America. What makes Korea very interesting is the very alternative outlook on life. Western people only see western TV so they assume, that everywhere is the same. It's absolutely fascinating that people can live on the same planet with the same foods etc, but still think and taste in completely differnt ways.

Rice for breakfast !

In Korea the whole concept of meals is different. For Koreans all meals are the same, but in the west each meal is different ; breakfast is usually simple, light and quick, the lunch is a light meal like sandwiches and in the evening dinner is a proper cooked meal usually consisting of potato, meat and vegetables often followed by something sweet like fruit or cake. Some people have the main meal dinner at lunchtime and then have a light meal in the evening ;this is called tea.

Rice does not grow in the UK, but these days British people sometimes eat rice. They eat as part of a main meal with meat and vegetables or more traditionally rice pudding a dessert at the end of the meal. Then it's cooked with milk and sugar. My father never eats rice my mother might eat it 2 times in one month.

So of course no one would think of eating rice for breakfast, the idea is very strange. But most Koreans eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. British people like chips (british deep fried potato), but no-one would eating them more than once a day.

I Prefer to Sleep

For me it seems so much time is wasted, but Koreans have different priorities. They will get up a 6am and eat for one hour while I would prefer to sleep the extra hour.

In Korea people go to restaurants very often, but in England my family never eats at restaurants.

If I told English people that the national food of Korea Kimchi is rotten cabbage they wouldn't believe me. But it's true !

The food in Korea is very varied it seems there's ...Cabbage in pepper sauce, fish in pepper sauce, shellfish in pepper sauce, soups with pepper sauce, radish with pepper sauce, potato with pepper sauce etc etc (joke !) In fact it's so amazing that Korean food and British food are very varied, but in completely different ways so that no Korean food is like any British food at all

I was surprised to see Koreans use good healthy foods like carrot, spring onion and lettuce, but they don't eat them fresh they destroy the flavour by covering them in salt and hot pepper.

I cannot eat most korean food. For me the best is not delicious it's just edible. I'm sure my mother and father wouldn't like any Korean food at all, but many western people do like spicey food. The popular Indian dishes in the UK are even more spicey than Korean food. So these people would appreciate the taste of some Korean foods. But I'm sure that almost all westerners would find the normal Korean breakfast very strange indeed.

I usually eat some western food I find in the supermarket.

But at the same time I can say experiencing the Korean eating customs and the extreme kindness of the Korean people is very interesting.

I think it is good to show foreigners korean food.. They will like the experience even if they are disappointed by the taste. Westerners and orientals are different. If they wanted to eat western food only then they would have stayed at home. They would love to to experience sitting on the floor , eating with chopsticks, the cooking of food at the table etc. But maybe they would get a bit bored of Korea food all the time, especially rice 3 times a day.

Everywhere I went in Korea people treated me to great meals. There is a story of a westerner who travelled around China in the time of Chairman Mao. At each time he was presented with huge banquets of food and he ate so well, while his hosts usually said they didn't want to eat cos they weren't hungry. So of course he reported that China's agriculture was good cos the people ate very well. Of course his hosts wanted to impress him to give a good impression of China. He later learned the truth there had been a famine in China and millions of people had starved.

The hospitality of Korean people was incredible , but even though they thoroughly spoilt me I believe they themselves usually eat very well.

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Alcohol - one of the reasons I don't like the UK is many people drink too much alcohol and do stupid things.. Like make fools of themselves and get into fights. This often happens at social occasions like weddings, but it's not socially acceptable thing to be like this. In the UK only low class people don't control their alcohol intake. So it's astonishing to me to see that in Korea not only is getting drunk socially acceptable it's almost obligatory. You see people doing business getting drunk together. The belief is that if get drunk with me then you must be my true friend and I can trust you.

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You can buy some western food in Korea, but of course it's the worst kind

In the UK I don't usually buy food like digestive biscuits and cornflakes, but I have to buy them in Korea cos I don't like Korean food. At least I can buy bananas and mandarins.