Theresa, I know you're gonna hate my guts, so just don't read this... 08/29/2009

Do you want to eat dog soup?

My first full day in my placement town and already I have been asked this question. The landlord of my will-be apartment wanted to take the teacher I am replacing, Jason, out to lunch along with myself. We squeezed like sardines into a tiny car and drove down the road to another tiny town not far away. We sat down to lunch and after Jason conferred with the elders he turned to me and asked, “Do you want to eat dog soup?” As in, ‘this is what they’re ordering unless you object.’ I, of course, said that I was fine with eating whatever they ordered, and Jason was relieved.

There are not many places in Korea that serve dog as a meal, and many people will tell foreigners that they do not eat or like dog even though they really do. This is for many reasons. Dog is technically illegal to eat in Korea – the government outlawed it a while back as a gesture of goodwill to the Western world. Also, people do not want to be known as ‘the people who eat dog – so awful.’ And I can understand why. Eating dog is not what Korea should be known for –they have so many other wonderful things to offer. And yes, Korea is known for its great culinary prowess around the world. Koreans can take anything and make it healthy and delicious - this is where pork, cabbage, beef, turnips, chicken, and yes dog comes in.

So we received our dog soup in a family-style pot on a burner in the middle of the table and it boiled and bubbled away. I watched others carefully to see how I should approach it. First, we received small bowls in which we made a strange mixture. This mixture consisted mostly of some sort of roasted, crushed seeds that tasted nutty and rich – sort of like coffee and sesame seeds. We added oil, chili paste, and wasabi to make a sauce that was grainy like fancy mustard would be. This was also the moment I fell in love with mul kimchee – water kimchee. It is a simple fermented cabbage: no chili paste, no oysters – just pickled cabbage – yum!

Then, we started in on the soup. Along with various dog parts, there were greens like scallions and, I think, bok choy, and also some bamboo and/or mushrooms. It is hard to tell what the things are in a soup. Now, before I go any further, my official statement about the soup is that it was good. I learned to say delicious in Korean today and used it many times – mogi soom ni da! This is not my absolute favorite Korean dish so far (which is soft tofu soup), but it was truly and honestly a good dish (which I cannot say about some of the other things I’ve had so far).

The meaty pieces of the dog were very good; they tasted a lot like a beef roast – almost exactly in fact. The broth was quite good as well. I would use my chopsticks to pick up some meat and veg from the communal pot and carefully airlifted it to my little bowl where my food rolled around in the seedy sauce. They serve things so boiling hot in Korea that I had to blow on my food for a while and still came home with a semi-burned mouth. The skin, however, was not my favorite part. I did not mind the fattiness or chewiness – as I enjoy things like chicken skin back home. It was the slight roughness on the surface of the skin where the fur used to be that bothered me – and now I will stop grossing you out.

Jason and I were kind of forced to eat until we exploded. I thought I was done with my lunch and put my utensils neatly to the side as instructed the previous night, but the man who will be my landlord gave me more skin to try, and eventually dumped a bunch of food in my bowl. Then, the owner of the restaurant came over and turned the soup into a brand new dish by adding rice, greens, chilis, cabbage and other things. Of course we had to eat the soup all over again as a rice dish.

When we just could not bear to eat any more, the owner put the leftovers in a to-go bowl and the landlord told us they would be fed to the dog when they got home. Yeah. I will leave that for all of us to ponder for a while, and just not comment.