SeoulTravel

BIYA (Seoul, Korea)- Buddha, Buddha, Buddaejjigae

One thing I really appreciate about living on campus at KU
is that there are a billion of restaurants nearby within a ten minute walking
distance. Most of them are quite inexpensive due to the large population of
poor starving students.

 
I think you will begin to notice a trend in my restaurant
posts. 😛 A lot of them will be near my campus because that is where I usually
dine during the weekdays when I have class. This particular restaurant called
BIYA specializes in
Buddaejjigae which
is essentially ‘army base stew’. I will mention why it’s called that a few
pictures down.
 
The Buddaejjigae is 5,500 won per person which is equivalent
to $5 CAD.
 
I realize every Korean restaurant has a stove in the middle
of the table and this one was no exception. They brought this giant pot full of
random things like cheese, rice cakes, onions, spam, ham, kimchi, red pepper
paste, green onions, and vermicelli to the table and proceeded to boil it in
front of our
  faces causing my face to
turn red (like always). We shared two pots of this for six people.


Since Koreans love having side dishes with their entrees, we
were given tater tots and pickled radish to munch on while we waited for the
pot to boil. I’ve never had tater tots as a side dish before in Korea but I
liked it! It reminded me of home. 🙂
 
So to provide some information on what Buddaejjigae is,
after the Korea war, some people made use of surplus food that they found from
US Army bases. They found ingredients such as hot dogs, canned ham, spam (the
food soldiers ate) and incorporated them into a spicy soup.
 
When everything is bubbling and ready, you pop in the ramyun
and it’s pretty much done!
 
Ta Da! You eat this soup/stew bubbling hot and many people
prefer to have it with rice.
 
Happy Eating!

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