Sometimes my social media feed presents interesting content which I didn’t ask for. Recently I began getting videos of what Korean office workers eat for lunch.
I haven’t had a lunch in a workplace cafeteria since March 2020 when our building shut down and we began working from home. Our cafeteria was accommodating and offered great choices, and I have the late middle aged girth to prove it. Our staff would conduct barbeques outside the cafeteria for special occasions and grill chicken, burgers and hotdogs, while inside we would have actual dinner fare for lunch. This probably stemmed from the amount of time most people would be stuck in traffic going home in the evenings, to prevent them having dinner at 8:00 at night.
Apparently Korean office staff are fed by their company at no or little expense to the employees. That’s a plus. The lunch privilege is often part of hiring contracts and something they are proud of, especially when costs are making it harder to meet such expenses.
The videos I have seen show somebody picking up a multi-compartment tray of nearly a dozen indented shapes and approaching a rice cooker filled with the day’s selection, often multi-grain or even purple rice which one self serves with a paddle resting nearby in a bowl of water. Next often comes kimchi (fermented cabbage and/or radish) or a variant. Next would come bulgogi, which is marinated meat thin-sliced and cooked on the grill or stir-fried. Vegetables are plentiful and may include a variety of leaves, shoots or salad greens; in fact, I have yet to see a clip without a healthy green salad accompanied by a ladle of pastel dressing of some kind.
Proteins can be squid rings, fish cakes, chicken or even pork. They all looked beautifully presented and came in fork-sized servings, though the only tools the person in the video used were a long-handled metal spoon and chopsticks. Everything is apparently washed, and with the exception of drinks, there is little to no paper waste.
One food item that piqued my curiosity was acorn jelly or dotorimuk, which is as you would expect from a savory gelatin; acorn starch is dissolved in water, with salt added, solidified and served in blocks with an optional dipping sauce. It’s supposed to have a simple, nutty flavor.
Another popular selection is stew or jjigae (gee-gay), cold soups, and spicy broths with the option to add ramen style noodles and heat over an individual hot plate. The tray filled up with what we might consider an extended flight of samplers but actually serve as a way to eat a little of everything and receive the nutritional values of each without going overboard.
The beverages were often small (think five ounce sized) and consisted of teas infused with peach or another fruit. No ice. Not a lot to eat or drink, but apparently just enough for lunch.
The obesity rate in South Korea is at a third of the population, especially for men and older adults, which seems odd considering the healthy fare I saw in the videos. There was nothing I would not be willing to try were I to find myself in a Seoul office building at lunchtime. Even an anchovy dish looked worthwhile.
The selection of lunch line videos has been inviting, especially when the OP has submitted so many of them that I won’t see a duplicate for some time. And when I am not drooling over kimchi, I can watch a rug cleaner, a sheep shearer, or a cow farrier relieving a bovine of nails in their hooves. Or watch more Universal visitors get insulted by Megatron.
What do they think of me in that social media algorithm mindset? I may never know. But keep feeding me.
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 