Bibimbop Till You Drop

I've been eating a lot of bibimbop.

It is a bowl with rice, vegetables, and an egg. They bring hot sauce for you to mix in. It usually comes with meat too, but you can ask them to leave it out.

The first couple of days that I was here, I walked around looking through the windows of restaurants looking for bibimbop on the menus. I found a place and went in. I had written down how to say "without meat please", but at first, this just confused them. They started suggesting dishes that had chicken. Eventually, they understood that I wanted bibimbop, I just wanted them to leave out the meat.

Lately, I've mostly been eating dolsot bibimbop. It is like bibimbop, but it comes in a hot pot and the rice on the bottom gets a little crunchy. As far as I know, it also never has meat, so it is easier to just order dolsot bibimbop than to order bibimbop without meat.

It is really good, but I was eating it almost every day and I was getting a little bibbimbopped-out.

Then, one Sunday, I went to Seoul and met some other vegetarians and went to a vegetarian restaurant. It was a buffet and I've never seen so much vegetarian food in the same place. It was one of the best and most satisfying meals of my life. I've been back again and have also found some other veggie restaurants in Seoul, so if I'm not travelling anywhere else, I will probably go to Seoul on the weekends. There is also supposed to be an organic vegetarian restaurant in another part of Incheon, but I haven't found it yet.