By Whit Altizer
So there I was; soju at the ready, a side of rice steaming in my face and a chicken foot pinched between my chopsticks.
Weeks of chicken feet talk, but no chicken feet. Finally, this rainy, cold April night my Korean friend coordinated a trip to a local 닭발 (‘dakbal’-chicken feet) restaurant.
According to her, we had picked the perfect night for chicken feet and soju. It was something she couldn’t explain, only that for a Korean soju and 닭발 act as comfort food for a nasty day.
Excited that we had come under such perfect circumstances, I put the foot in my mouth, chewed and swallowed.
Suggest chicken feet– or feet of any kind– as food to Westerners and most likely you’ll receive an uncomfortable reaction. Some friends of ours use to tell a story about accidentally eating 닭발 their first night in the same way one might tell a war story.
Since then I have come to trust the culinary choices made by Koreans. Anyone that can make boring vegetables taste exciting deserves that kind of trust. These days I jump at the opportunity to try something that seems, to my Western stomach, inedible.
The sight of chicken feet is a little strange because, after all, they look exactly like, well…chicken feet. They are marinated in a gochuchang-based sauce and sometimes brought to you raw.
After about 10-20 minutes of cooking they come off tasting a bit like buffalo wings from home. Only the skin and cartilage of the foot make the texture seem strange, but there isn’t much of either. They can also be spicy, but not uncomfortable. It is a fire that a little soju can most certainly put out.
Not everyone loved the chicken feet so we also ordered some sausage. Our waiter, sensitive to the notion that foreigners don’t care for feet, also brought us some pork. Along with the typical side dishes we also had a couple of unusual ones in the form of beets and silkworm larvae. If you are nervous about the chicken feet, try the larvae first, it will make you ready for anything.
Overall the experience was good. I think I loved the idea of taking part in a Korean culinary experience more than I loved the chicken feet themselves.
But I will go back. The only disappointment was that after swallowing my first chicken foot and reflecting on the aftertaste, I didn’t feel like a culinary hero at all. I just felt like a foreigner hopelessly in love with Korean cuisine.
