October
By Jake Emen
August 23, 2019
I had one of the most magical dining and drinking experiences of my life in South Korea for $10. It was a veritable feast, with an endless parade of dishes appearing at lightning speed in front of our hungry group—kimchi pancakes, pork belly with two-year-old kimchi and tofu, grilled fish, sesame-fried egg, soy-marinated crab and rice, whole chicken soup with wild sesame. The star of the show, however, was the meal's essential drink, brought to the table in kettles and served in brass bowls. Held within was makgeolli, a traditional Korean rice wine that's cloudy-milky in appearance and wields a tangy, fizzy, lactic-fermented flavor. It's addictively good.
As you drink, the restaurant—an establishment such as Yetchon Makgeolli in the town of Jeonju where such wondrous feasts are a specialty—serves up a frenetic and intoxicating assortment of delicious dishes. Need more makgeolli? Shake that empty kettle and get it cling-clanging as loud as you can until the staff places another before you.
It's a boisterous adrenaline rush of a meal, and something that any traveler should try at least once. "The Jeonju makgeolli experience is definitely one of the highlights of eating your way through Korea since it is unlike anything else in the world," says Daniel Gray, a food journalist and tour guide who included the meal while designing Intrepid Travel's immersive South Korea Real Food Adventure, an immersive weeklong food crawl he occasionally leads himself.
It was my first taste of makgeolli, and I needed to learn more.
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