April 20, 2010 – Daejeon, South Korea

It’s 2am and we had not eaten our dinner yet. We ordered our first meal in a laid-back eatery.

I was adjusting myself to the new language I heard from the television when a lady knelt at the corner of our low-leveled dining table. I was overwhelmed with the number of bowls she was putting on the table.

Korean table setting is also named as Ban-sang setting and it is composed of a rice bowl alongside with side dishes. Table setting depends on whether a noodle dish or meat is to be served.   It is also determined by the number of side dishes and there are 3, 5, 7, 9, 12 side dishes that can be served. We had 3 side dishes.

As customary, side dishes are shared among diners but rice and soup are served individually.  Koreans, unlike other chopsticks citizens, use spoon more often. They eat rice with spoon while chopsticks are used for side dishes.