Korean cuisine, kimchi and all that stuff

Earlier I put together a short article discussing places you must see in Seoul. But I forgot to add one bullet...or rather more - that thousands great restaurants and food stalls around Seoul. 

I am not a foodie, mostly I eat for eating - that basically means a meal is good because there are good ingredients , and it doesn't matter much how it tastes. I created this habit few years ago. Though many people will call me a barbarian but I find it very useful. Despite that, I am able to say that Korea, and particularly metropolis Seoul, is a heaven for foodies. And was even heaven for me.

At first, eating out  in Seoul is very cheap (and I come from Czech republic where everything is comparatively cheaper than in the rest of the world). Except western cuisine.  Secondly restaurants are everywhere, and where are not restaurants you will find a food stall. Also the concept of the restaurant is slightly different to western(and westernized Japanese) culture - you never wait for a meal as majority of them offer only one or maximally few types of meal. That also means that you specially go for this meal to this restaurant and for other meal to other one.

Never eat alone

Set of meals usually mirror country's past experiences and the culture. Thanks to long time of poverty when amount of food was sparse, Koreans used to shar one meal. Nowadays the meal is much more rich but probably in the past one speciality was just hot water with rice. And Kimchi. 

And thus nowadays most of meals are arranged in a way that more people share -in Europe famous Samgyeopsal can be good example. For other meals, you will get your rice bowl, probably a soup and than many bowls of vegetable, sea food, kimchi, meat shared in whole table... Be careful if there are some Czechs at your table, because you will have to eat it fast :). It is also the reason why chopsticks in Korea are a bit longer.

So sometimes it is a bit boring to travel around alone. You will have to get used big servings. Or leave meal unfinished. 

What is Kimchi actually?

I must admit that one must get used to the cuisine - many people won't. One of this types of food is Kimchi. You will generally get Kimchi at every meal, in eateries you can mostly take as much Kimchi as you eat. At the first time I tasted it I was kind of disgusted. It is a processed cabbage - a bit sour and can be very spicy. But now I miss it and I have theory that it is what makes Koreans so healthy and slim good looking :).

Korean cuisine is very healthy anyway. And I believe one can get way better experience in Korean than in for food renowned Japan, as Japanese cuisine and restaurants were very much westernized. For example Japanese restaurants are for me not really distinguishable from these in Europe. Offering many meals, waiting, expensive. You just eat with chopsticks. Just boring comparing to the experience in Korea. At least I got this feeling after 2 weeks in Japan.