The Scissors And The Woman At The Noodle Bar /Gyeongju
A few weeks ago I watched “Somebody Feed Phil”(Netflix) episode on Seoul. Phil’s recommended restaurants and observations are pretty spot on so I should’ve paid more attention. In this episode, he had a scene in a Seoul seafood restaurant where he praised the crab dish and said he had eaten it with the help of his scissors. He said Koreans like their scissors. I forgot all about it
This story coming up is a continuation of the noodle bar story on yesterday’s blog, the one where I spilt the sauce on my white jeans. Anyway, I forgot the most important part until I woke up this morning and remembered this woman’s face!
I was at this noodle bar for lunch. After I had ordered the chilli beef ramen dish, I was gawking at the size of this dish when it arrived,a large salad bowl sized serving. I proceeded to eat the dish, then splattered it all over myself because I dropped the noodles (those metal flat chopsticks just don’t have the same grip) from some height because I hadn’t used the spoon to assist the chopsticks. So I reached for the salt in the middle of a shared table to put it on the stains to stop them from settling.
It was at this time I noticed there were scissors and metal tongs next to me, along with some kimchi, since it comes with a Korean meal. There was large cabbage piece on top of the kimchi and since it was too large for the spoon and I didn’t want to drop food again with the metal chopsticks, I proceeded to spear this large piece of kimchi with my chopstick then plopped into my mouth. Of course the piece was large, and very spicy, so I was furiously chomping at it when I looked up to this horrified expression on this woman sharing my table with me. She slowly kept her eye on me, grabbed her pile of kimchi with her tongs and proceeded to chop the kimchi into tiny bite pieces and eat them daintily with her chopsticks. Sigh. I felt like a savage. Always use the scissors next to you.
Today I met up with my guide for the next week and this nice, young man named William, explained to me, in absence of a knife, the Koreans cut everything with these scissors , from barbecued meats to crispy pork belly. Next time I’ll pay more attention to Phil!
Today I took the train to Gyeongju pronounced (keeeyongshoo). I was amazed how mountanous Korea is, 70 percent of the land is just mountains. The tiny valleys in between have towns, small cities and modern buildings.
In Gyeongju, a historical center which was the center of culture and learning a couple or so of millennia ago, there are replicated buildings and bridges from olden times. Nothing much remains except hypothetical views of what might have been since no documents or dwellings were saved from invasion. Koreans arrive en masse, with their families in tow, to learn about the history of the Silla kingdom. The weather was awful, raining off and on, so we took refuge in these sights and hopefully tomorrow it’ll clear up. I want to go hiking!
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