Korean Barbeque

To most people, these two words harken to images of savory food enjoyed in an exotic atmosphere.

 

Not me.

 

The mere mention of the words, Korean and barbecue in the same sentence brings back terrible memories of one of the worst nights of my life.

 

I thought about that dreadful night this weekend when my beautiful wife and I decided to go down to Tallahassee and try out the new Korean Barbecue place.

 

Our company had filmed a commercial for the restaurant a couple weeks ago and made it look delicious.

 

But, when I mentioned it to my wife instead of her saying, “Let’s go eat,” her reply was a deep moan.

 

She remembers that night all those years ago when Korean/Mongolian barbecue almost killed her. Well, not just her. All of us.

 

We took our kids on a trip to see the sites in our nation’s capital. They wanted to go to Smithsonian and all the other stuff in Washington, DC, and since admission to all those places was free, we thought it would make an affordable trip with lots of wonderful memories.

 

Little did we just know the horror that would soon befall us.

 

No, we didn’t get eaten by a dinosaur at the museum of natural history. The Wright Brothers plane didn’t fall off its mount in the Air & Space Museum and flatten us like a bug.

 

Oh no, this was a much worse.

 

Ever since our kids were little, we have tried to expose them to as many places and as many unique cultures as possible. We figured the more they knew about the world the better they would be able to live happily in it.

 

So we went everywhere.

 

The mountains, the beach, caverns, abandoned mines,

decommissioned nuclear test sites, and a plethora of museums

 

And while we were at all of these far-flung places, we would always try some of the local cuisine.

 

Sometimes that meant beignets in New Orleans, chicken and waffles in Atlanta, our Cuban food in Miami.

 

Our family was a little different. OK, a lot different. Instead of eating fried chicken and fries, which seems to be the most common diet in Southwest Georgia, we went for more exotic fare.

 

We tried frog legs, crêpes, lavender ice cream, and my kid’s personal favorite, sushi. There was lots of sushi. It’s a wonder my kids don’t have a tape worm.

 

So when we arrived in DC, we decided to seek out something we had never tried before: real authentic Korean/Mongolian barbecue.

 

We’ve had plenty of barbecue over the years. Remember JB’s down in Beachton? We single-handedly kept those folks in business.

 

Well, Korean barbecue is nothing like JB’s.

 

Instead of big plates of smoked brisket and chicken delivered to your table slathered in sauce, Korean barbecue is served at your table raw.

 

Yeah, raw. Half the fun of the experience is taking the slices of raw meat, usually beef or pork, and cooking them yourself on a small ‘grill’ in the center of the table.

 

I guess it’s not really what we consider a grill. It’s more like an overturned wash pot that’s heated up to what feels like a couple thousand degrees.

 

You could cook a squirrel on that thing in no time flat, although you won’t find any rodents on the menus.

 

Well, maybe some cat meat. Who knows?

 

After charring your strips of meat on that blazing grill, you dip them into a variety of different sauces.

 

Not ketchup or honey mustard sauce. The sauce were a little more exotic than that. Thing like ssamjang (soybean paste and chili paste) and gochujang (a spicy chili paste).

 

Spicy is the key word here. Koreans apparently are immune to the kind of stuff that would kill your grandmother and your little sissy cousin, Rick with that hoop earring in his left nostril.

 

This stuff is blazing and packs a nice dose of heartburn with each bite.

 

But that didn’t stop our little youngins from digging in and eating like someone who had been buried under a building for a month with nothing to eat but their own toenails.

 

When the waiter told them it was ‘all you can eat’, my two sons looked at each other and smiled.

 

This would be another test of their manhood. Today’s battle: Who could eat the most spicy food without throwing up.

 

My scrappy daughter was right there with them. Just because you have external plumbing didn’t mean you were naturally inclined to being the best at a gourge fest.

 

My wife and I sat back and just watched the carnage.

 

Those kids must have eaten 30 pounds each of those little strips of meat.

 

The contest was not just to see who could hold down the most food without hurling. Oh, no! This was also a test of who had an iron stomach.

 

With every trip to refill their plates of meat, they began dipping those little morsels in hotter and hotter sauces.

 

Their bellies stretched. They sweated. Their faces grew red. And they washed down those morsels with gallons of Mt. Dew.

 

I should have known right then and there that this would not end well.

We should have sold them to somebody on the street instead of taking them with us back to the hotel.

 

They ate so much that I was afraid the owner of the establishment was going to come out of kitchen with a meat cleaver and chase us out of the restaurant.

 

Finally, after eating an entire cow and decimating the hog population of the greater DC area, they were full.

 

We paid the bill and waddled out of the restaurant.

 

Before we got back, one of my sons was already complaining that he didn’t feel so good.

 

I told him that’s what you get when you eat 100 pounds of beef dipped in lava.

 

That didn’t make him feel any better.

 

Back then, to save money we would all stay in one room at the hotel. A couple kids in one bed, my wife and I in another bed, and one kid on a rollaway.

 

Budgets were tight so our living quarters were as well.

 

Somehow, everyone managed to get into their pajamas without throwing up on each other and off to bed we went , collective moans of misery filling the room.

 

And then it started.

 

Armageddon.

 

I smelled the first volley waft through the air and over my head towards my wife.

 

It was like the breath of a dog that had eaten the butthole of a dead possum.

 

One of my sons giggled and said, “Sorry.”

 

I considered this just a minor infraction. Nothing to get upset about. We all have occasional flatulence.

 

Even people who you would never expect to break wind do it. Like Taylor Swift and the Queen.

 

Yeah, the old gal probably held it in until the state dinner was over and she was tucked tightly away in her Windsor Palace bedroom. And she would rip one that could kill a corgi.

 

Jolly-O!

 

Flatulence is natural. The average person farts at least 15 times per day. For teenage boys, it’s more like 399 times a day.

 

Nothing to get upset about. Unless you were in that Washington, DC hotel room on that fateful night.

 

The Horrible Night of Korea’s Revenge, as our family calls it.

 

What happened in that room for the next several hours was anything but normal.

 

That first little poot that came about ten minutes after we went to bed opened the floodgates of hell.

 

Suddenly, both boys had the one cheek squeak. I feared the curse would catch us all sooner or layer, except my dainty little wife. She claims that she would never do something as vile as passing wind.

 

I know that’s a lie but I just go along with her delusion.

 

The butt trumpets began to blow until the room was filled with what sounded like the London Symphony Brass Section playing Ride of the Valkyries.

 

And the odor!

 

I don’t know how to describe it in terms that people would understand.

 

It was vile and noxious and was akin to the odor that one would experience if they somehow fell into a long abandoned septic tank. One built before Napoleon’s invasion of Austria.

 

After a plague of dysentery.

 

My wife gagged. Not figuratively. She literally gagged and for a moment I thought the noxious odor of Korean barbecue flatulence would join the alluring bouquet of Korean barbecue vomit.

 

My wife told the boys to “Stop it!” She has a very low tolerance for flatulence and considers the producer of such disgusting fumes a true menace to society.

 

Then my daughter started.

 

Not my precious little baby girl! She had been attacked by the curse of the Koreans, too.

 

Her farts came out in a higher pitch, kind of like a piccolo- she was a girl after all- but the odor was just as noxious.

 

The boys heard their sister’s air release and considered that a provocation. Sorta’ like America and North Korea.

 

Challenge accepted.

 

While the cacophony of odoriferous music was being played a few feet away, I suddenly felt the urge to expel a little gas myself.

 

Oh, no. The monster has gotten ahold of me, too.

 

I tried to hold it in by squeezing my ample butt cheeks together and telling my sphincter that if he didn’t keep his mouth shut, there would be hell to pay.

 

I might go eat a couple of spicy burritos and how would he like that?

But my butt muscles were busy at the moment trying to keep me out of divorce court.

 

I tried as hard as I could but my rebellious anal zone betrayed me and I let one rip.

 

My wife removed the pillow from her face long enough to give me a look I recognized. It meant ‘don’t expect to see me naked until Christmas.’

 

Then she lept from our bed and barricaded herself in the bathroom. Most likely so she could fart in peace.

 

The performance of Lovett’s Butt Symphony #5 in E minor continued way into the wee hours of the next morning.

 

I’m pretty sure that the next day, when the housekeeper opened the door to our room, she immediately called the CDC who dispatched a hazmat team to remove the sheets from our beds and burn them in the parking lot.

 

We made some great memories on that trip. And learned some valuable lessons. Never eat Korean Barbecue again. And never share a room with those disgusting offspring of ours’.

 

Our visit to the Korean barbecue place today was as fun and tasty.

 

So far, I have not experienced the return of the ‘Mongolian Barbecue Plague of 2005.’

 

But the day is young. My disobedient digestive system could just be waiting to launch a surprise attack. After we get home and go to bed.

 

If you want to know how it turned out, just check the obituaries in the paper next week.

 

It will state that I accidentally fell on a butcher knife.

 

Nine times.