We had a culinary epiphany tonight. We had the jones for some korean food so we headed to "Nam San," a restaurant in the 19éme recommended to us by a fellow korean. He told us to order the Gamjatang ( "gamja"=potato, "tang"=soup), which is a spicy pork spine soup. yes--pork spine. It has some potatoes and veggies too, but mostly composed of pork spine, hot pepper powder and water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamjatang

A google search of "gamjatang" produced this previously unknown trivia: "Gamjatang is known to be rich in proteins, calcium and Vitamin B1 (from the pork bones) and is believed to prevent snoring as well as aging."

Prior to this night we had never eaten gamjatang. 2 reasons: (1) pork spine never sounded too appetizing (2) as a child, when we asked our mom about it she said, "Don't eat that, it's peasant food." Also, aside from a Korean Soju house in Berkeley(gamjatang is beloved by drunk college kids), it isn't a common menu item (presumably because it's peasant food. Hah).

Decided that tonight was the night we conquered our fear of the gamjatang. When we got to the restaurant, we sat down, opened the menu, pointed at the picture of the gamjatang to our server (our korean sucks) and nervously awaited our fate. Think we chose a good place to confront the beast though: gamjatang is clearly the house specialty--when we looked around the restaurant, literally every guest had a gamjatang on their table. At one point a group of about 30 korean tourists arrived, ate gamjatang and left. True story.

When you first eat gamjatang all you can really taste is hotness--both in terms of spice and temperature (the two probably aid and abet actually). The soup is viscous and stewy. You spend a lot of energy trying to glean whatever meat you can from the bones (which is not much--it's freaking spine after all!). We’ll be honest: there is a lot of sucking and spitting/picking out bone involved. (No wonder our mom never wanted us to eat it--ain't exactly ladylike). In fact, we’d recommend wearing a plastic suit (remember the "body condom"?) while eating gamjatang. It's pretty messy.

This is the kind of dish that makes you wipe your brow and blow your nose every once in awhile. For Koreans this is a marker of an excellent meal. We noted that enjoyment of the gamjatang gradually increases the more you eat of it. Like the "minus meatloaf" in the Phantom Tollbooth--the more you eat the hungrier you get!

Somewhere amidst the brow wiping, nose blowing, bone sucking/picking—we started to feel a strange sense of pride and endearment towards the Korean culture. Can't you just imagine the birth of this dish? Some poor Korean with nothing else in the house, cold night, etc. etc. Where do you get pork spine anyhow? Isn't that the stuff the butcher throws out (even the dogs don't want it!)? Ah, Koreans are so economically shrewd! Seriously though, this whole love of your country's cuisine that so many chefs go on (AND ON) about. We get it. Thanks to the gamjatang.

As we left the restaurant--stinky, sweaty, exhuasted--we felt extraordinarily satisfied. The food at Nam San wasn’t the tastiest we’d ever had, but it had a lot of heart and humor. Are we proud to be Korean? Damn straight.