A Little Taste of the Past

Some experiences are beyond explanation that anyone else will really understand fully.  I had one of these on Thursday.  While she was here, my mom had mentioned a vegetarian restaurant run by a buddhist monk, but we didn't have time to go.  So Kelsey and I decided to go for dinner just for an interesting experience. The restaurant is called Sanchon 산천 and it is tucked away in a little alley in the more traditional part of the city called Insadong 인사동. It was set up like a traditional tea house inside with lots of plants and old wood work and was really quite lovely. The best description I can give you is that it looked like the inside of a Japanese building or house you'd see in a movie set before the modern era.  We sat at a floor table and at first the floor heat was really nice, but the longer we sat there the more boiling hot it got.  Booty melting temperatures.  We were the presented with a 23 plate meal of mostly unidentifiable green things.  There was a plate of appetizers that was more familiar, with things such as mushrooms, fried kelp, acorn jelly, some kimchi and spicy lettuce and Korean pancakes 파전.

Then came the plate of mysterious green things, one of which smelled like feet. We were very amused by the whole situation and spent most of it giggling. It wasn't a bad meal, in fact, some of it actually tasted pretty good, it was just very unusual and not something where I would wake up one day and be like "I really feel like eating monk food today." Next, came the dancing.

There were three different performers who each did two dances a piece.  A couple of them were really interesting, but I swear there was one where all she did was walk around the stage and play with her skirt like you would right before you curtsy.  There was about a half hour of dancing followed by about 10 minutes of drumming.  The three women came out with drums and played them over a drum and flute track playing in the background.  It wouldn't have been so painfully funny if they had rhythm or decided not to use a background track.  They would get off and you would hear two sets of drumming off beat from each other and it just sounded horrible.  The girl playing the pan was particularly bad and she had the loudest instrument.

For some reason we can't explain, Kelsey and I found this night ridiculously entertaining.  We spent the whole way home bursting out in laughter from the whole ordeal.  In any case, if you are either really serious of have a good sense of humor I would totally recommend doing it.  It's a nice look at traditional Korean culture although it is a little on the pricey side.