DPRK Food, Day 8

Our last meal in North Korea was on the train in the dining cart. It was actually also our first opportunity to eat in the presence of the Leaders. And don't you just love the dangling plastic fruits and the nicotine stained ceiling?

For 5 euros a head we got served the set lunch. Clockwise from top: some kimchi stuff, duck stew, fried fish, chicken, and fried egg. I didn't really get to eat the duck and chicken because they were so bony. I tried the kimchi and fish, they were not as good as the stuff we were getting in restaurants. I moved on to the over-easy fried egg and I think that was a fatal mistake(more on that later).

The set of course came with rice and soup. We all decided to combine the two as the train was really bumpy. My rice was cold too so it was just as well. The cabbage soup was somewhat peppery and it was a good complement to the rice (I know it doesn't look it). It made eating dry plain rice a lot more enjoyable.

In my train cabin in the middle of the night I woke myself up with my tummy's rumbling sounds. Not a good sign at all. I avoided getting up and slept till the morning anyway but everything started to loose control by 7am. After a couple of violent episodes I ran out of toilet paper, but the unrest continued on. The worst nightmare was coming true: mingy train bathroom + the trots + no toilet paper. What could be worse?? Here's a big thank you to S for his generous donation of his tissues.

At 8:40am, our train pulled in to the Beijing Train Station. My stomach was getting worse despite my 2 doses of Imodium. The trip from station to airport was painful, literally. I got the nastiest cramps and it was difficult to stand up straight even. Luckily the comfortable lounge provided me the much needed bathroom and a lounge chair.

Once on the plane I was certainly not in the mood to stomach any food, especially crappy food. This is the chicken with pasta option on our China Eastern flight from Beijing to Shanghai. My sensible self decided I should eat something and so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and took a bite. Guilty as charged! The not-so-nice looking white sauce which reminded me of school lunch box had absolutely no taste at all. The chicken was freshly defrosted and you could still taste the freezer. The spaghetti was cooked to death and mushy....and don't even ask me about the starter and that blob of unidentifiable object in the little bowl.

Below is the meal we had on the way from Shanghai to Beijing. Tip: at least it's more difficult to screw up breakfast.

P.S. That croissant was probably the healthiest on earth. Not even 1mg of butter in it.

DPRK Food, Day 7

Lunch was at the hotel Korean hotel again with the usual rice-kimchi-soup combination. Had to charge my camera up for the Mass Games in the evening so no pictures. Sorry!

Luckily the hotpot dinner made up for the increasingly boring kimchi and rice meals. I am not usually a big hotpot fan. The problem with hotpot is that everything tastes the same but I was happy to have something different.

I wasn't sure what Korea hotpot would be like but I was delighted to see individual pots.

Here are the hotpot ingredients: beef, onions, cabbage, potatoes, cucumber, noodles and carrots. The beef goes in first and when it's boiling you put the rest in and finish it with a beaten egg.

It took about 15 mins to have the broth simmering again. There were seasonings for the broth: black pepper, chili, salt, and MSG!!!! It was my first time being served MSG right in front of my face. Interesting.

There were a number of side dishes in addition to the hotpot. The cuttlefish salad was not bad..to many tentacles and not enough cuttlefish though. I still prefer the spicy Thai version.

Some chicken and potato stew thing. A little dull but not bad at all. It was as good as a chicken and potato stew could get.

Chicken and cucumber salad with sesame oil. Light and refreshing and a good buffer dish to have with the meaty hotpot.

There was the fried flat fish of course, as you can see on the top right corner of the pic. We didn't really know what these balls were. They had a faint sweet taste and spongy in texture. Almost like a fried tofu ball.

Today's favourite: the potato slices in the hotpot! Somehow they absorbed all the flavours and essence of the broth. Yum!

DPRK Food, Day 6

With Kaesong being the old capital, we got to sample the historic cuisine naturally. Pangsanggi, meaning a set of dishes for a table, refers to an old tradition meal originally eaten only by the royals. It always has an odd number of dishes ranging from 5 to 11.
We were spoiled with choices! From bottom left to right: tofu, fried mushrooms, kimchi, flatfish, sliced potato, cucumber, sliced pork, fried egg, and finally some sweet biscuits. I thought I would need extra helpings as my eyes are always bigger than my belly. Once we got going though we realised there was more than enough food.

As usual there were rice and a soup on the side. To be honest none of the dishes tasted particularly delicious, they were prepared in the ways not dissimilar to the food we had been having for the last few days. But then we totally enjoyed it, as they say presentation is everything!

Even the small soju cup was cute!

For dinner we got to sit at the traditional and uncomfortable Korean table. Anticipation for the meal was extremely high because this was the day we got to try the you-know-what meat for the first time. I even put on my tradition Korean dress for the occasion.

The Korean version of fish and chips. Pass the tartar sauce and vinegar please!

The shredded potato was really nice and refreshing.

The stir-fried minced meat and hard tofu was tasty! Unlike the spicy Chinese MaPo tofu this dish had a soya base and a slightly sweet taste. And I certainly prefer the texture of hard tofu - can't stand the soft slimy stuff.

The cucumber salad was nicely seasoned with garlic and chili.

Some kind of pork stew. A bit nondescript. And you can see the fried cabbage (what else?) on the lower left corner.

And finally................drum roll please........................the dog soup we had been waiting for the entire trip. It was optional and cost us 5 euros/person. We decided that since we were in Korea it had to be done. We were told that dogs are bred specially for eating in Korea and they are always yellow.

We didn't know what to expect but we were told that it'd be spicy and tasty and here it was. It came with a clear broth with chili sauce on the side. I tried the broth and decided that the spicier the better.

The meat tasted similar to red meat, with texture similar to beef shank or mutton. Truth be told if no one told me this was dog meat, I would never have guessed. It wasn't bad but I can't say I liked it. First we didn't like the skin and the fatty bits at all. Then of course there's the psychological struggle. I actually thought about leaving the rest after I had tried some, but it would be impolite. I ate as much as I could (pretending I was a Fear Factor contestant).

Today's favourite: the tofu dish.

DPRK Food, Day 5

We knew we were having a packed lunch for the day and I took peanut butter, Korean chili sauce, and some apples with us. And I felt so smug. Then our French teammates announced that they had brought pate, bread AND wine for us to share, all the way from France!!! Merci beaucoup!

They packed everything so carefully in layers of newspaper, towels, and plastic bags. Now that's dedication. The pate and wine was a nice addition to the packed lunch, which had beef, cucumber, bread and rice. It didn't taste too bad actually, especially with lots of chili sauce in it.

Maybe we were forever cursed for the day with our luck on food. Dinner looked rather unexciting. Especially after the scrumptious feast we had yesterday.

The cube of thing on the top right-hand corner was fish. While it was edible it wasn't all that nice. I would have to be a little more desperate if I were to eat it. The chicken was less than average (let's say it ain't KFC) and the 3 blobs of shredded veg were a little blah. The bun had meat and veg filling, which was actually not bad. I ended up using a lot of kimchi to help chow down my rice.

The soup was actually like a mixture of miso and beef broth. It helped fill the hole I guess.

Today's favourite: nothing, unfortunately.

DPRK Food, Day 4

Day 4, May Day. The food we had on that day was so nice it's like Christmas and birthday all rolled into one.

After our exhausting morning or dancing and boat rowing we were all too happy to be trying the Sinsollo at a local restaurant. The dish is prepared with over 30 different ingredients and it's a little similar to a hot pot. I have to say the flame looked pretty impressive.

Ingredients should usually include chicken, beef, pork, pheasant, shrimp, egg, bamboo shoot, mushroom, chestnut, pine nut, abalone, sea cucumber, spring onion, liver, and etc. From what I could tell ours had egg and beef and pork, some veggies and liver (unfortunately I ate a piece before I realised what it was). I was too hungry to verify the content of my spoonful of food I was wolfing down. All I knew was everrything tasted nice (except that liver I spat out), and we got unlimted broth too.

A piece of fried chicken was served to cater to the tourists' needs I guess. Why not just give us Korean food? It tasted much beter!

The grass infused, sorry herb, bread was intereting enough to look at.

Kimchi was good as gold.

Pyongyang cold noodles was available at €1.50. Bring it on! This version was even better than the one we had on Day 3. The chili sauce had so much kick it was a good thrill!

Another "western dish" for the foreigners. In this case the salmon was actually not bad.

It would be hard to match up to the excellent lunch, but I've got two magic words for you:"barbecue" and "duck".

We got a little worried cos we swore we thought our guide H said we were going to a famous barbecue "dark meat" restaurant. I wasn't too worried as I wanted to try it anyway but some were very concerned. I think we were all happy to find out she meant duck (she even spelled it out for us in case we'd be stupid again).

When we saw the BBQ plates on the table we knew we were in the right place. The duck was marinated in special Korean ingredients, which had a nice sweet taste. 9 out of 10!

There were also a number of other duck dishes. I believe this one is a smoked version with chopped leek on top. Tasty!

This one is similar to a Chinese BBQ duck without the crispy skin. Maybe it's braised? The meat tasted good though.

I would normally ditch the veg but the fact that we hadn't had much veggies in the last few days we were grateful to have whatever other than kimchi. ( I love kimchi but it's good to have varieties if you know what I mean.)

I actually don't remember much about the soup other than the fact that it had dumplings in it. It's weird that they would serve it at the end of the meal? I ate the dumplings but the vodka and soju killed that particular part of my memory.

The day's favourite: Pyongyang cold noodles once again!

DPRK Food, Day 3

Having tried the food at the Hyangsan Hotel the previous night we were a little bummed out when we found out we had to go back for lunch. Luckily we got to eat at the revolving restaurant!

The spread was not bad looking. There were egg salad and bread!! Risking salmonella I made myself an egg sandwich anyway. The fish and the veggie were as bland as we expected.
Another meat-in-water concoction! This time with noodles. I was so hungry anyway I ate everything. The post-soju-drink munchies!

We knew we were in good hands when dinner was at the Yanggakdo Korean restaurant back in Pyongyang. The kimchi was rich and flavourful.

Then came the legendary Pyongyang Raeng Myon (cold noodles). A popular dish for the summer, buckwheat noodles are served with eggs, pork, sliced pear, and vegetables in an ice-cold broth. I had imagine eating noodles out of a cold broth would be weird but I was so wrong. It was delicious! First you put the white vinegar on the noodles, then mustard and chili sauce before you mix everything up. The noodles had a lot of texture, and I loved the sour and spicy flavours from the condiments. Very refreshing indeed!

Full and satisfied, we headed to the only Italian restaurant in town for a few drinks. The place apparently is opened by someone from NGO. It churns out home-made yogurt and bread but we were too stuffed for any of those. Didn't stop us from looking at the menu and cracking jokes though.

The day's favourite: Pyongyang cold noodles!

DPRK Food, Day 2

Day 2. Korean restaurant, hotel food.

Breakfast (sorry no pictures) at the hotel was simple and normal: bread, scrambled eggs, and some Korean stuff like kimchi, fried flatfish, rice and etc.

We were greeted with another Korean beer at lunch. TaeDongGang was not bad but I did prefer the one we had on day one.

The starters for the day: kimchi and veggie tempura. The kimchi was nice and spicy and not too garlicky. The Korean version of tempura was more solid and a lot heavier than the fluffy Japanese version. I actually prefer the rustic approach (especially when I'm hungry!).

Then we had beef bulgogi!!!! It was probably the best dish we had of the entire trip. The sweet bulgogi sauce and the tender and lean beef. I am getting hungry as we speak.

The Korean pancake thing was plain, floury and soft and it had a piece of thin bacon fat on top. It was probably deep fried and too greasy for me.

Another winner of the meal: bibimbap! I always liked the version with the hot stone bowl but the cold version was actually really nice and refreshing. There was hardly enough chili sauce though(I LOVE the Korean chili sauce).

In comparison to the excellent lunch dinner at the hotel in Mt. Myohyang paled significantly. Actually it sucked big time even without the comparison. The veggies were bland and uncreative and I think there was a meat dish too. We fed on the bread.

The soup was best described as beef and radish slices in (not even hot) water (quote courtesy J and E).

Our attempt to make up the calorie count by drinking more beer was turned down bluntly ("NO" completed with an evil stare). We moved to the karaoke instead. There we got to try the syrupy wild grape liquor. I had a small glass but I felt like I was going to have an instant hangover. Time to move on.

Legend has it one can not get a hangover in Mt. Myohyang because of its fresh air and we would put this theory to test. (Yes I am a Mythbusters fan.) We decided to hit the soju. (Ahh it reminded me the good old days when my friend V and I would go and have Korean BBQ with at least 1 bottle of Jinro each!) This version was easier to drink then Jinro probably due to its relatively low alcohol content at 25%.

And you know what the legend is true! Despite something around 10 (albeit small) shots of the stuff I woke up the next day fresh as a daisy.

The day's favourite: beef bulgogi.