Fish Time...Oh and Snails!

South Korea beat North Korea with a late 87th minute goal in 1-0 win in the World Cup qualifying match. It was a fun game to watch however being a Wednesday meant that the bars were pretty quiet and people would be going home early. Which is what I was hoping for actually. I was already tired from a cold which was hanging over me and I had drank a lot over the previous weekend

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However a light night was not for us. After the match we went to meet our director who was taking us for food for some celebration I was unaware of. It turned out to be a fish restaurant. Now I am partial to a fish supper now and then and a bit of salmon is never a bad thing, but in general I am not a fish eater. Moreover in Korea all the fish restaurants have open tanks outside displaying there live menu. However they are always open topped glass tanks with so many fish sploshing around you can barely tell them apart. They never look that clean and the contents range from eels to zebra-esqued ones, ugly shell creatures and mouldy things I would never like to have set eyes on.

However my first impressions were completely wrong; apart from the starter that is. Our first course consisted of raw snails with wasabi sauce. Now any Koreans reading this will probably see this as completely normal, in fact so would many European countries, but having to clench down on a raw snail (yes raw, pale green, cold and stringy) while yanking away the shell is not the most normal thing during British supper. This was accompanied by octopus tentacles, again raw, with a red sweet and spicy sauce. My worst fears were coming true. A meal in which everything would be raw, strange and highly fishy. Next up was a small fish called chung-oo or something, however this was good and after the myriad of bones I had to navigate through with my chopsticks.

The main course. I was informed, was called 'gin-rummy' which means fin in Korea, pure coincidence but true. Now it was raw, cold, chewy and looked like a pale amalgamy of jelly and egg white. However it tasted.....good. With a bit of chilly sauce or wasabi it was nice. My co- teachers ordered some 'chi-gay'(tofu spicy soup) and showed me how to boil the fish in the soup if you wished. You'll never guess what transformation occurred! After a quick dip in the soup and the pale gin rummy transformed into exactly the type of fish u get in your supper back home. Only without the batter and ten times fresher. I was pleasantly surprised and gobbled up a lot. The last dish was one of the zebra-esqued fish which was barbecued. And that again tasted good, no taste of salt or sea but fresh and thick. I was surprised.

All in all I would try it again. I have been promising Mimi I would go for some Sushi so I might give it a bash some time.