Celebration banquet or why do you always eat Chinese food when you are in Korea?

Whenever we do an installation in Korea we host a celebration dinner at the end to celebrate our joint Korean-American success.  This year we had to do it on my second night in Taean because the big boss would be gone at the time we actually finished acceptance testing.  So here is what we had (compare and contrast to last year and I'll try to keep the courses in order.  Oh, and this year I was not the target.

Kevin and Matt, two of my engineers at the table before all the Koreans arrive.  As the night happened, Matt was sort of the target but the night was relatively somber because of the nationwide morning for the sailors on the Cheonan (google it).  I say relatively somber, because one of the Koreans did threaten to kiss him at one point.  Back to the meal.

First course, Jellyfish in the center, prawn with a sweet sauce at bottom, duck with a tangy sause on right, not really sure what on left (it had a ketchupy tasting sauce and was somewhat firm to the tooth, but no idea what it was, it did not scream fish OR fowl, but was probably one or the other) and "Thousand Year Old" egg at top.  All good (didn't eat the parsley).

Seond course, seafood and mushrooms in a shark fin sauce. Also good.  To drink there is the soju shot glass (don't drink to the bottom if you don't want it refilled) on right and Jasmine-like tea on left and bottle of Crown Royal in center top.

Vegetables and bean sprouts in yet another red sauce.  The long red pepper is not a bell pepper, but a korea hot pepper.  Moist towelette on right (apparently I committed a faux pas by not using it at the beginning of the meal).

Sorry for the bad photo, but this is "Red and White" Prawns.  It is just two huge fried prawns, the one on the left in a sweet white sauce, almost like gravy, and the one on the right in a spicy red sauce.  This is the first chinese food that Matthew ever cooked for the family 3 or 4 years ago.

Sweet bits of pork fried lightly and tossed in another sauce (this one the most like what Americans get in Sweet and Sour) with veggies on lettuce.  Notice the bottle of Crown is gone, now.

Vegetables cooked in a Korean spicy sauce, pretty hot.  What you do is you use your chopsticks (if you read the older parts of the blog you should be surprised that these are plastic chopsticks) to pick off a fold of the sweet bun on the left and then put some of the veggies on that, wrap it and eat it like a burrito (well a teeny-tiny burrito) it is almost completely unlike eating moo-shu.  Notice that beer has joined the soju and whiskey in the alcohol pantheon for the night.

I thought this was desert.  It was a sweet ball of fried dough thickly encrusted with sesame seeds.  That doesn't quite describe it, but it was memorably good.

It turns out we had to order a main course.  I did not understand this, even though one of my Korean friends tried to explain it (basically you get all those previous course as a set up to the main dish which you order off a menu that the waitress didn't bring and would have been in Korean anyway so everybody just go noodles, apparently at random), so I ended up with egg drop noodles which tasted just like you would imagine.

Daniel, the best english speaker of the Koreans, got the hot seafood noodles.

Matt, the pseudo-target, got his favorite dish Black Bean Noodles.  We eat this at lunch 3 or 4 times in every 2 week trip and this trip was no exception, so you can probably guess what we had for lunch that day.

And for desert we had a foamy creme thing that tasted sweet and very, very airy.

Happy Korean engineers.  Brown bottles are beer, Green bottles are soju, except for the square green one in the bottom center which is an evil Chinese Whiskey that makes you wish for the delicate flavor of Mekong.

Soju, or, if you ain't cheating you ain't trying.

Last Thursday we had the traditional dinner that we do with our Korean customers during a successful installation. This usually consists of a feast at a restaurant nearby to the range paid for and hosted by my company but directed and chosen by the Koreans.

This installation we went to a Chinese restaurant, mostly because one of the guys is quite old and the Koreans wanted to find a place with tables and chairs. The feast was great and I'll have a separate post on the food (which you may have already seen), but this is about the drinking, which is an integral part to a Korean dinner.

Dinner drinking starts with one of the engineers breaking out the two bottles of Johnny Walker Black that one of my engineers bought in duty-free and toasts all around. Then begins the low level individual drinking.

In this phase there are shot glasses placed on the table, but fewer glasses than people. These are strategically placed along with a couple of bottles of soju in the midst of about 6 people. There are about 3 shot glasses and the rule at this point is that you never pour your own drink, you can only poor a drink for someone else. So someone pours you a shot and you down it. But then you have to pass the glass to someone else in your local group and then they take a shot. The only real requirement is that just about everyone gets a shot at this point and the senior people from my company make sure and toast the senior Korean. He is only drinking scotch at this point and when you exchange a toast with him you just pour him a sliver.

So of course I am participating at this point, but I'm getting a little more attention than everyone else at my group. This is because I am the "target", the new project manager, and my 'staff' and the Koreans are conspiring to make this my worst nightmare. But they are backing off and as the food comes the pouring slows down and it is only between course that more shots are foisted on me. Also the rules begin to change. Now when someone brings you a glass, you have to down it and immediately pour them a shot and they down it. It looks like this:
Random Korean staff pours me a shot of soju. I am bound to accept gracefully from the Koreans, but at the end of the dinner (and I'm not sure we got to the end because the last course was noodles, when I think it should have been fruit).
Once I've taken the shot, I hand him the glass and pour for him. I have to pur with my right hand only and only with my left hand over my heart as in the picture.

Nice custom, unless you are the target and there are 13 Koreans trying to exchange shots with you and only one of me. As the courses wound down they were lining up and Koreans I hadn't even met were insisting on pouring me a shot. At this point I made them tell me their name and what system they were working on in English before I would let the pour. Here's what the table looked like near me before the serious drinking started. All the bottles in this picture are empty, brown is beer bottle, green is soju bottle and tupperware is tea.
The dishes in the bottle line are the typical korean meal accompaniements; kimshee, raw onions and garlic, more kimshee made of stuff other than cabbage and the really hot kimshee.

I don't know how much I drank, more than 30 shots. But I cheated. I did drink every one of the shots poured for me, but one (I put that one in Burnsed's soup), but I made sure that I would walk out under my own power without ralphing. I did manage to carry that off as I walked the 6 or 7 blocks back to the hotel under my own power to the amazement of all. I didn't barf until after I got back to my room (probably saved me from alcohol poisoning) and tried to drink a bottle of gatorade. I hate to say it, but as I've gotten older I have to resort to tricks that I would never have tried when I was younger if I want to keep up with foolish drinking. Extra points to anyone who can guess what tricks I used.

Traditional Korean Dinner (Restaurant)

We went again to a traditional Korean restaurant with one of the Koreans from the test range. Just a note, we don't go to real Korean restaurants without a Korean escort. This sign had all the English we would see of restaurant materials.Here is our food. They put it on the floor next to the grates that will be over the heaters for us to cook our pork ribs. Of course we sit on the floor (on very thin pillows) with our legs crossed under us. Hard duty for old men like me. Also there are no rest rooms, so I tried not to drink too quickly.

These are the side dishes. Apparently for most big Korean meals, eaten at a long table by a relatively big group (more than 4 based on what I've seen, a limited sample to say the least), there are always a variety of side dishes. The fish there in the middle is cold and has the skin on, but is cooked. Squid and shrimp (both cooked, in the restaurant last Sunday night was thin strips of raw beef, but tonight everything was cooked) to the right, middle forward is apples in mayonnaise (I think this is at every Korean dinner), left corner is some gelatinous thing I couldn't identify even after tasting. Above the apples in mayonnaise is crab in kimchee seasonings, they said it was soft shell, but it was hard shell. It is shrimp and crab season now and next week I will be hosting a crab and shrimp boil. Mushrooms and gralic got grilled next to the pork ribs.
The waitress cuts the meat into smaller slices (except for the part near the bones) and turns the meat for you. Our Korean escort was impatient (and had the hots for the waitress) and cut the meat himself sometimes. He used scissors just like her.
One of the side dishes was a hot seafood soup that had this in it. After eating it I don't know what it was. It looked like a small brain, but tasted like a clam or a mussel. The engineer from California wouldn't eat it and he's eaten everything so far. I ate a couple. I'll post and let ya'll know if it kills me.

The waitress let me take her picture. She was working like six of these tables and had almost no help, although a 12 or 13 year old girl did start helping her later, but she kept up with our food all night without complaining (well, no complaints I could understand).
Here's the stuff that is most likely to kill me. This is soju, originally a rice based liquor, but now more based on sweet potatoes. It is the Korean form of Vodka and not bad. I am using a few old man tricks so I don't drink too much or get two wasted. I doubt I'll be able to avoid it for the whole trip though because the engineers have in their minds that one night (probably next Thursday) I will be the target. If my tricks work that night I will brag about it.
The restaurant is a family one. In spite of the fact that a lot of the adults in the rooms were drinking heavily the kids seemed to be having a good time, too. They seem amazed to see non-Koreans, but mostly friendly. These two girls were at the table behind me and kept trying to dodge my camera.
As we were leaving the grandma of this family was nice and bowed to us. I asked in English if I could take the picture of the entire family, but the grandfather said no, although in a very friendly way. In the end he made a big "X" by crossing his forearms in front of him. It was funny.
This is the entrance/exit where you leave/get your shoes. These kids were teasing one of my engineers when I came out. As we left the building they were singing some phrase over and over. I hope it wasn't naughty.