Schezuan Hot Pot Adventure

Happy Lunar New Years everyone! Lunar New Years (best known throughout the world as "Chinese New Year") goes by the name of 설날 (Seollal) here in Korea and is culturally much more important than the solar new year celebrated by most of the west.

It is mostly a family holiday for most Koreans, but foreigners like it too because we don't have to work! The problem is there isn't too much going on (it would be sort of like going out on the town on Christmas), so this entry is about a "happy accident" we had while trying to eat at a popular sushi restaurant on the holiday.

We had met up with another couple (an American and a Korean) in the Sincheon area of Seoul (near Jamsil) and began our search for Sushi Nori, a very nice sushi roll restaurant by Seoul's standards. But alas! It was closed for the holiday! With limited options and pushed for a quick decision by the -10 C degree temperature, we jumped at our friend's suggestion of Chinese lamb "shabu shabu", or "hot pot" restaurant. Shabu shabu is actually the Japanese take on thewe thought we understood what we were getting ourselves into. It turned out this was more of an authentic hot pot and we were in for a little surprise.

We ordered the basic hot pot and out came a fairly large pot and a portable gas stove. The pot was divided into two different sections down the middle and in each section was a different kind of broth, one with seafood and green onion. The other side we weren't so sure. It was a deep red and had a big metal mesh ball floating in it filled with an unknown substance (sort like a giant tea ball). Oh, and chiles, lots of chiles. At first taste we noticed a sort of strange taste but we carried on in normal hot pot fashion by adding the vegetables and slowly dipping in the thin slices of frozen lamb. The seafood broth was quite nice and palatable, but as time went on, all of us started experiencing a strange sensation with the red broth. At first we thought it was just spicy, so we took out all of the dried chiles that were floating on top. But as it continued to boil, the sensation became more intense - it felt sort of like the broth had tannin in it, the sensation you get when drinking dry red wine, but it was also very different as there was also a slight numbing sensation. At that point we decided to withdraw the mystery ball but the damage was done and we sort of just avoided with red broth from that point out.

Well, after dinner we did a little research and discovered the culprit. The contents of the mystery ball was sichuan pepper, or "flower pepper". While not technically a pepper, it is used a lot in schezuan style cooking. Here is the wikipedia description of their effect: "they produce a strange tingling, buzzing, numbing sensation that is something like the effect of carbonated drinks or of a mild electrical current (touching the terminals of a nine-volt battery to the tongue). Sanshools appear to act on several different kinds of nerve endings at once to induce sensitivity to touch and cold in nerves that are ordinarily nonsensitive. So theoretically may cause a kind of general neurological confusion."

So, while it did sort of surprise us, we would consider visiting such a restaurant again armed with our new knowledge of what we had. Game plan for next time: remove the flower pepper immediately and put all vegetables into the seafood broth.

Give the bus drivers a break!

Riding a bus in Seoul can be a terrifying experiences. Most bus drivers here drive like taxi drivers. They speed up to get to the next bus stop, they cut off cars, make jack rabbit stops and starts and creep up on cars that are in the way and then honk their horns. If you don't have a seat on a bus within 3 seconds of stepping on you had better be holding onto something or you will fall over. It's a ride. A wild ride. In fact, this experience is so universal that a very clever man made a cute comic about it here.

Perhaps we've mentioned before though that Koreans work long hours so I imagine it's the same for the bus drivers. I'm guessing that they work longer than 8 hour shifts, that they get few breaks and that the job quickly gets frustrating. This is my assumption. I'll have to ask around. One of the more novel things about riding a bus is Seoul is the driver smoke break. Occasionally, as with any big city, there will be a traffic light where you will have to wait 5 minutes for it to cycle around. When this happens, it's not uncommon to see the bus driver turn the bus off and step outside for a cigarrette while they wait for the light to come around to them. If you look at the picture below, you will see the green bus. If you look closely, you'll notice the bus driver standing in front of the bus smoking a cigarette.He isn't parked there. He's in a traffic lane. You might also notice that traffic is still flowing. Also, the bus is full of people. I'm not certain why I find the so hilarious. It makes sense, driving a bus is stressful, and I'd rather my driver take a five minute smoke break than using the bus to run down pedestrians. But for me, it's funny to see.