The faculty cafeteria at Dongguk University serves simple meals for W5,000, but you can also opt for the vegetarian buffet for W7,000. Below, you see a typical plateful of monk-approved goodies, but the Atkins freaks among you will doubtless notice the carby elements hidden among the leafier fare (e.g., the breaded-and-fried chili peppers at 2 o'clock on the plate).
The thing that looks like ground beef (at 12 o'clock) is actually well-cooked (fried?) tofu, I believe. It certainly doesn't feel like meat when I chew on it, but the visual impression of meatiness is powerful enough to wreak havoc in my brain even while I'm masticating. I truly want to believe I'm eating meat. The actual mouth-feel is tough and fibrous—perhaps an attempt at simulating meat's resistance to chewing. From 9 o'clock to almost 12 o'clock on the left side of my plate, you can see a lovely pile of sauced-up nuts and figs—very carby. But oh, so delicious. Korean veggies are in the middle, and a standard Western salad dominates the bottom half of this plate. (I did end up going back for seconds, but not of the porridge.)
Above my plate are (1) a bowl of hobak-juk (i.e., squash/pumpkin porridge) and a cup of raspberry juice (advertised as bokbunja, i.e., raspberries, but the fruits in the juice sure look more like blackberries to me).
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2 comments:
Bokbunja are, more specifically, black raspberries. But blackberries and raspberries belong to the same genus. I didn't know this before, but apparently the difference between blackberries and raspberries is whether the stem stays with the fruit or the plant when you pick the berries. When you pick a raspberry, the stem stays with the plant, but when you pick a blackberry, the stem stays with the fruit.
Learn something new every day, that's my motto.
I didn't know raspberries had races.
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