If You’ve Never Had a Soju Hangover You May Not Understand This Breakfast
If You’ve Never Had a Soju Hangover You May Not Understand This Breakfast
Three-Minute Ramen in Daejeon
I found myself in Daejeon, South Korea on the tail end of a liquor-fueled, 17-country odyssey across Europe and Asia. It would be the last city I explored before heading back home to Ottawa.
By the time I arrived in Daejeon, my funds were running quite low, as is generally the case at the conclusion of a long trip. The time had unfortunately come for belt-tightening, unless I was prepared to starve until I boarded my flight home. So whiskey gave way to soju and beer in big plastic bottles, and dinners out were replaced by spicy beef jerky and cellophane-wrapped, triangle-shaped kimbap.
On one of my last mornings in Daejeon, I woke up feeling truly haggard. I’d consumed far too much soju the night before, and was tender with all the internal bruises one typically feels after a run-in with Korea’s most popular alcoholic beverage. After spending several minutes mired in my sleeping bag trying to make peace with my hangover, my depleted body’s screams for sustenance became too loud to ignore and I ambled out into the Daejeon morning in search of breakfast. Hell-bent on stretching the remaining contents of my bank account, I decided to see what I could find to eat in a nearby 7-Eleven.
As my childhood neighborhood’s only seller of Pokémon cards, the 7-Eleven had been a staple of my youth. As it turns out, however, the 7-Elevens in South Korea are quite different from the ones I was used to. The most notable difference, of course, is that in South Korea, the store’s shelves are packed with beer, wine, and liquor; a fantasy at best in the Canadian province of Ontario, where regressive liquor legislation limits the sale of alcohol to just a few stores. Another key difference between the Canadian 7-Elevens I knew and the one I wandered into in Daejeon that morning was the inclusion of a small dining area. Running along the front window of the store was a counter where customers could sit and enjoy their purchases.
So, after meandering the brightly-lit aisles of the store and shakily deciding on a bowl of three-minute ramen and a can of Let’s Be coffee, I took a seat to eat my breakfast which, I can proudly say, cost me just a few dollars. The ramen was good and hot; soothing to my soju-tortured stomach and just spicy enough to help me sweat out some of the alcohol. The coffee—or coffee imposter—was as thick and vile as pond water. It was, however, rich in caffeine, which is precisely what I needed on that bleary-eyed, South Korean morning.
I swapped mouthfuls of steaming ramen with reluctant slurps of canned coffee, watching through the window as patient parents shepherded their children to school and briefcase-toting businesspeople made their walks to work. A few short days later, I’d be back to the normal routines of my life.