Shabu-shabu {Darrell}

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Cathy discovered her favourite food tonight. As part of an initiative to get us teachers more in touch with the local culture, a group of us piled into taxis this evening and went to a shabu-shabu restaurant down the road. This is a really fun evening out.

The tables are very low and you sit on flat pillows on the gound. In the centre of the table is a dip which holds a iron pot over a gas cooker. Inside the pot is a spicy vegetable stew. Each person at the table is given a plate which has about a dozen pieces of very thinly cut raw beef. The whole thing then works a bit like a fondue.

You use your chopsticks to dip the meat into the rapidly boiling stew. Within a few seconds the meat is cooked through and all flavoured, so you can eat it. When you are finished eating the meat, they bring a big bowl of noodles and dump these into the stew/soup. You then have a course where everyone serves themselves the flavoured noodles and eats these with the soup. Yum yum!!! When you've finished off all of that they take away the pot. They then add a mix of rice and veg which they mix with the pasty stuff left from the stew. They mix it up to spicy flavoured rice which everyone eats off the side of the pot with a spoon.

Of course the whole thing is served with soju (rice wine) which tastes more like weak vodka, just to lubricate the conversation. We were the only two new to shabu-shabu and soju in a party of 12, so everyone was very keen to pour drinks for us. Luckily through a bit of smooth talking we managed to get off pretty lightly.

The evening was great fun, with all of us laughing and sitting on the floor eating together. Definately one which will be repeated in the near future. Once again we've had some fantastic Korean food, which proves that it is still out there. Several of the street foods (like live sea worm and dried squid) are still a bit exotic for us, but we're getting there.

Check back soon for photos

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