Kimchi Festival

One of the things that Jeollanam-do province is known for is it's food. Here is an excerpt from my travel book:

"Considered the 'rice bowl of Korea,' the two Jeolla Provinces are a veritable cornucopia of food. In the late spring, ample rains water the fields, and the farmers can be seen bent over, planting even rows of rice. As might be expected with such an agricultural region, the women from this area are considered the best cooks in Korea.

The conspicuous lack of heavy industry in the Jeolla provinces does have advantages, as the region has perhaps the cleanest air and best-preserved natural environment in Korea. A ride through the countryside reveals scenes that are only a memory in more devolped provinces. The Korean curve motif is everywhere in this pastoral scene- in the sublte curves of terraced rice paddies, the rolling curves of mountains, hills, and burial mounds, and the upcurved roofs of traditional farmhouses.

Gwangju competes with Jeonju for honors such as "best food in Korea" and "the most food served in Korea." This is because in the past, wealthy landlords established gracious food standards, and because the lush Honam Plain in Jeollanam-do has provided food for the city's gormets."

This describes Gwangju perfectly. A lot of times if you are hungry before you go out downtown, you're better off to NOT get food, because you are always served food when you order a drink. They don't want you to drink on an empty stomach! For example, downtown last night our free bar food was (unlimited) sweet potatoes, deep fried mushrooms, rice cakes in red sauce, and nuts. Other times, we've gotten squid or fish jerkey, popcorn, rice cakes, and other light snack foods.

Anyhow, since Ben and Neil were visiting from Busan for the weekend, we decided to hit up the Kimchi Festival together. The boys were a little late arriving, because they had a very late (or early!) night that ended with them eating at 4am at a 24 hour bulgabi restaurant.

I got to the fest grounds next to the World Cup Stadium around 11:30 am, and met up with a girl Megan from Korean class and her co-teacher. We walked around for a bit before everyone else came and saw lots of things. There were many white booths set up on the Southern Providence Food Street where you could eat to your hearts content. There were huge slabs of pork, octopus on a stick, various kinds of kimchi, and lots of Soju and Maekju. The smells were overwhelming, but in a good way. Inside one of the stadiums, we could sample and buy different kinds of kimchi. It was great. I must have had samples of 15 different kinds. I couldn't tell you what they all were though!

There was a special booth called "Foreigners Making Kimchi." I really wanted to do it, but I knew that I wasn't going to be going home until after midnight, and didn't want to be carrying around a pail of cabbage and spices with me all day. I happened to see Steve and Linda Brown (also EPIK teachers, about 50 years old) and they had made some kimchi already. They said it was a lot of fun, but wasn't easy!

For lunch, our menu was on a piece of paper, all in Korean. Alli, Emily, Brian, and I did our best to order by just pointing at one. We figured that it would be pork, because there was so much of it at this booth. We first had their kimchi, which was delicious, then they brought out a second kind of kimchi, which we determined after 10 minutes was our main course. There were dark bits of something in it. It was kind of earthy, like a mushroom, but also kind of meaty. Alli is somewhat a vegetarian, no red meat, so we had to figure out what it was. We eventually found out that it was snails. It wasn't bad, but not what any of us had expected. That's what happends when you just randomly point to something on a menu, hope for the best!