In a world where all food is technically asian food...ONE MAN....is hungry ALL THE TIME

A lot of questions have arisen about food here, so this post will focus mostly on the dining experience of Korean food.
First of all, let me just say that Americans don’t know jack about spicy.  Yes, I’m even looking at you, Buffalo Wild Wings fans.  Just because you can keep adding more and more pepper to the sauce of your “hot food” item doesn’t really qualify you for the Spicy Food experience of Korea.  (let it be known here that in terms of eating hot wings, the author is an acknowledgedly inexperienced and infernally challenged novice- or as most males would put it, a Total Wuss) However.  In America we have hot wings one night.  And then we have steak.  And maybe fried chicken or pork chops the next night.  Then maybe Spaghetti. And all of them are served with equally even-tempered side dishes whose Kick on the Mohs’ Hardness Scale of Food Spiciness is somewhere between bread and a beanie baby.  And then there’s this place.  
The meat is hot.  The side dishes are hot.  The SAUERKRAUT is hot (and eaten with every meal).  The soup is hot.  And you drink water with them.  Or alcohol if you’re that bold (incidents of the liquor igniting when coming into contact with the sauces are quite common.  277 Koreans die every year from explosions caused by their sauces.)  And in all honesty, I’ve shied away from the foods they told me were actually spicy.  In other words, the food gets so hot, you wish your tired tongue was fire proof.
UNDEEERRRR THE BOARDWALK. 
apologies.  Stuck in my head.  What can you do?

Another interesting experience I’ve had was visiting the very western Dunkin Donuts for a bagel one morning.  I saw on the overhead menu that they served hotdogs, but the food was labeled Hot-Sausage-Bread.  I laughed inwardly.  How overly complicated!  Why not just call a hotdog a hotdog?  (if you know where this is going, don’t shout it out right now.  You’ll spoil it for the rest of the audience).  I thought nothing of it until my coworker and I met her friend at the mall.  Shortly after introductions, my coworker did the quick rundown of where have you been/ what cute new tops did you buy/ did you eat already?  And she had.  And when asked about this, she replied that she’d had dog for dinner and it had been quite delicious.  Ancient traditional food?  Yes.  Alive and fetching?  Absolutely.  Need more proof?  In the unit on occupations, I asked my kindergarten class what a doctor would need, a teacher, a firefighter, etc.  Then I got to chef.
Jeff-Teacher:  Now what would a chef need for his job?  I think he would need…..beef!

Student:  Fishy!
Student:  Chicken!

Student: Dog?
JT (yeah, JT.  That just happened):  did you say “Duck?” *quacking duck call with my hands*
Student:  *laughing incredulously* Nooo!  Dog!  Arf arf!
(Of course, by now the rest of the class had latched onto the duck call noise with their hands, and I had to quiet my room of quacking ducks down, which admittedly gave me an excuse to not have any reaction to the barking little livestock)
Don’t worry though, I was reassured by my co-worker’s friend, they only eat big dogs, not little ones.  And that makes sense.  No matter how good the meat was, could you imagine a whole pasture full of cockapoos? 
I think I’d eat them first.

*Disclaimer- I am making no judgments here.  Koreans eat dog, some people in China eat live lobsters, we eat pigs(which are supposedly almost as smart as humans), the Japanese eat their fish without cooking it, the Scottish eat sheep stomach…and ok seriously, kilts are weird enough, what made you think Haggis was a good idea?*

They do have burgers and fries and chicken sandwiches, which they never get quite right and always include some sauce I can’t identify which would simply be labled a “zesty asian sauce” in America.  Also, their Giant Double Burger is smaller than a single quarter pounder.  Ever wonder why they’re all thinner than us?  Apparently Italian food is popular here, but I’d bet the spaghetti is eaten with chopsticks, because as a wise Chinese once asked me, “how could you possibly eat noodles with a fork?”.  Perspective.  Sometimes we need it.

Til next time,
JT