food porn: why it pays to speak Korean

My hunt for the rotisserie truck is a story of discovery, failure, and eventual triumph culminating in some juicy food porn. I had seen the truck, last week, parked on the corner of a T-intersection on the main drag into Hayang. Upon seeing the truck, which advertised chicken and samgyeopsal (i.e., a fatty, pork-belly cut without all the chemicals that go into industrial bacon), I vowed to go buy myself a pile of meat. The truck was advertising two small rotisserie chickens for W10,000, which is a fairly standard price for such chicken (the real miracle is when the dude advertising three chickens for W10,000 comes to town). I'd never seen rotisserie samgyeopsal before, and I wanted to try that out, too.

But for one reason or another, I wasn't able to visit the truck after I'd first seen it. When I finally did have the time to do so, the truck disappeared, like the faerie realm of Brigadoon. Dammit, was all I could think. Missed opportunities—the story of my fucking life. I lost hope of ever seeing the truck again, but just yesterday, it reappeared, and in a harmonic convergence of propitious circumstances, I had the time and the money to go purchase myself a pile of dead animal flesh. So I limped over to the truck (yes: still limping; the pain's not through with me, it seems) and spoke with the tough-looking ajumma who ran it.

I started off by telling her that I was very hungry, so I would be buying a lot. She cackled in delight, chalking this up as a triumph for her truck's mojo. Then I did a crucial thing: I asked her why I hadn't seen her for a few days. "I'm here Tuesday/Thursday this week," she said. "Next week, I'm doing Monday-Wednesday-Friday." I saw, belatedly, that her truck was also advertising duck meat, which I might try next time around. The Hayang region is dotted with duck-themed restaurants, none of which I've visited, but the preponderance of which makes me wonder whether duck is some sort of local or regional specialty. In any case, I ordered two chickens and a rack of samgyeopsal for W20,000. Didn't mind paying that price at all, given the volume of meat.

As the ajumma tugged the meat off the rotisserie spits, I asked her how long it took to cook the birds and the pork. "Not long," she said. "Maybe an hour or so for the pork." I told her I was surprised: I had thought the meat had been sitting in there all day. "Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "Then it wouldn't taste good!" I joked that, if the meat were in there too long, it might turn into jerky. The ajumma laughed. She sliced the samgyeopsal for me; I had thought she would just sell me the chunk and I'd slice it myself, but no—she prepped it for dipping. Our transaction now concluded, I asked her one last set of questions: "What time do you arrive?"—to which she replied, "4 o'clock," and "Can I buy meat right at 4 o'clock?"—to which she said yes.

Overall, the meal I tore into last night was excellent. The chicken's white meat was slightly dry, but that's really the only complaint. I'd recommend this truck to anyone looking to score a pile of meat. In fact, I'm going to mention it to my coworkers later today.

So! What follows is a series of rotisserie-truck pictures. The woman calls her truck "Well-being Barbecue," which I find hilarious. Koreans toss about the term "well-being" in all sorts of contexts, probably because the concept is fuzzy and metaphysical enough to appeal to East Asian sensibilities. The first three shots (portrait) are "establishing shots" of the truck, plus a glimpse of the sturdy ajumma herself. The last six shots (landscape) have been deliberately kept large—it's food porn, after all—so you'll need to click those images to see them in all their glory. I tried for a true porn-style, right-up-in-the-crotch kind of shot at the very end.

Click on the following to enlarge:

Finding out the info about the rotisserie truck would not have been possible had I been unable to speak Korean. Yet another reason why knowing a language gives you a measure of independence. Don't be a linguistic cripple.



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