After a night out with my coworkers celebrating (a little bit too hard) my good friend Shaun’s farewell back to England/Canada and the arrival of a lovely new South African couple, I was in need of some of that good ol’ Jeonju food to cure my hangover.

Luckily Rachel and I live walking distance to the “New City” of Jeonju called Shinshigaji  which is a good place to go out for the night. There are also great places to eat such as this little place famous for their pork and rice soup called Dwaeji Gukbap (돼지국밥) and Gamjatang (감자탕) which is pork spine soup.

Personally, gamjatang is my favorite. It is a spicy Korean soup made from the spine of a pig. It often contains potatoes, cellophane noodles, dried daikon radish greens, perilla leaves, green onions, hot peppers and ground sesame seeds. The black bowl that it is served in is called a dolsot or stone pot.

The vertebrae are usually separated with bits of incredibly tender meat clinging to them that require some fine motor skills to remove it 😉 As with most other dishes in Korea, gamjatang is usually served with kimchi and a bowl of rice (my favorite thing to do is throw the rice right into the bowl!).

Eating pork spine soup may not sound all that appetizing to those who haven’t had Korean food before, but they’re remarkably tasty and have the added bonus of curing a nasty hangover.