I needed to find the place to eat alone. As I wrote before, it was not easy to find the restaurant to eat alone in Mokpo. Almost of the menu was served for more than 2 persons at least, due to the side dishes. The side dishes played the important role in Korean culinary. I hope to introduce the side dishes next time.
My option for enjoying the food was very restricted in the representative area of Korean food. While walking around here and there to find proper restaurant, I saw the interesting restaurant. What I thought interesting was the title of that restaurant. The name of the restaurant was “Hae Nam sik dang”. Here ‘sik dang’ means the restaurant.
‘Hae Nam’ is a small area not far from Mokpo city. In Mokpo city, the representative local area of the culinary in Korea, using it’s local name in Mokpo could be conceived as a kind of the aggressive measures.
It means that the owner of that restaurant is confident in his food. Their main menu was the pork spine soup. I have not heard that they use the pork spine of the culinary in other country until now.
In Korea, the feet and the spine of the pork is very good material for food. The feet and the spine of the pork were considered as the food for the common people. The beef was very expensive for ordinary people. Besides the cows were very important for the agriculture, so the government strictly prohibited to butcher the cows.
Naturally the pork was the main source for attaining the protein with the chickens.
One problem in cooking the pork was a smell. The pork has the some stinking smell. So it was the most important secret that the ways to reduce the stinking smell.
The common recipe was using lots of red pepper and the garlic. That strong spicy reduce the stinky smell.
In this restaurant, the recipe was quite different from that of other restaurant. They did not put any strong spicy. It means that they have special recipe of their own. They had opened the restaurant with this special recipe for several decades.
I could not feel any stinky smell in this food. The taste of the soup was so light, simple.
It seemed that they put korean traditional drug plants to reduce the smell.
Using the Korean traditional drug plant in the recipe would be a small act.
But this small try often results in the Big change.
Success depends on weather you make an innovation or not. In many cases, the innovations are not far from our ordinary life.
(The way to eat. It is the same as I have explained before several times)
At first, you need to eat the pork
Next, put the rice into the bowl
I drank it up to the bottom.
It was cold outside. I had walked for all day long to look around the city.
It was nice food for me. I strongly recommend to visit this restaurant when you visit Mokpo city.