Not for white people

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Location: Busan, Korea

I was walking along Haeundae beach and popped into a restaurant for dinner. The waitstaff didn't speak any English, but the menu had pictures.

The restaurant offered a lot of stews. Korean stews are often an angry red color, and these were no exception. The pictures were a bit too small for me to tell what was in each stew.

I picked a stew, essentially at random. The waiter looked nervous and motioned for me to wait a second. He came back with one of the cooks, who had obviously been in the middle of cooking something.

The waiter asked the cook to translate something.

The cook struggled, and came up with: "This... soup... not... for... white people."

I have no idea what they were trying to communicate, but I assured them that it was fine and that I still wanted the stew.

The stew arrived boiling hot, so I did have to wait a couple minutes for it to cool down. It was very spicy, but not unbearably so. I think the meat was chicken. It was a bit tricky to get the meat off the bones. Overall, it was a pretty tasty stew. I wish I knew why the waiter had been concerned.

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