Lunch with Nan

During my week of Korean chilbo lessons, Nan, my chilbo teacher wanted to take me and Rocketman out to lunch one day.


She brought along the guy that does the amazing metalwork. He knew a little English, enough to tell me that he wasn't married and was poor. I took this photo and caught them as they were finishing the meal. We went to a restaurant that turned out to be not too far from our Korean apartment.

I always like to get a photo looking down on the table. It never ceases to amaze me all the dishes that are used and I always feel it looks like a painting. I also think about the poor soul that will be doing the dishes later. This wasn't even all of them, they kept coming but we had already started to eat.

This was raw fish and the only thing people ate was the fish not the white stuff but we were told that was for decoration.

Closeups of some of the side dishes.

This is the pot that your rice came in. It is one of those hot pots that doesn't cool. After the rice was gone except for the burnt rice you couldn't scrape off, they come and poor tea into the pot and you stir it and eat it like a soup. It also cleans the pot. How does it taste? Well, to me it tastes like tea and rice. I was so full by then it was hard to eat very much.

It came with a nice wooden stand built around the pot. There were some pregnant pauses in conversation which is to be expected. We were dining with two Koreans with little English knowledge and two Americans with one having little Korean knowledge. Rocketman does very well in understanding a lot of Korean. He would disagree but it's true.

I found out that Nan's husband works in a city 3-4 hours away so she never really sees him. This is not uncommon in South Korea and we know several couples that have done this. I can't imagine but it works for them. She also has a 15 year old daughter who is just as talented as her mom.