The Tang

Well, here it is, quite possibly one of my three most favorite foods in Korea, gamgatang.
This soup, actually it is more like a stew, is one of the best foods in Korea and every two or three weeks the A.P. crew head over to our favorite place to eat what we call the "Tang".
Grandmas Gamgatang is a little, narrow, hole in the wall restaurant down a side street on one corner of one of our red light districts here in Sokcho.
The restaurant itself is a low, L-shaped building with spots for about three cars. Three are two main dining rooms that can each fit about ten-15 people and a smaller room that is the "V.I.P" room and can hold about eight people.
The kitchen, where the goodness comes from, is pretty small, only about the size of a large bathroom and has a bare cement floor with a drain in the middle of it, this makes it easier to wash away the blood and grime after the pig spines are split and cut up.
Yes that's right, pig spines. Gamgatang is a slightly spicy potato and pig spine soup. When the bowl comes there is a pile of spine bones with pieces of meat so tender that they fall off the bone with just a little prodding from a pair of chopsticks, the potatoes, which have been boiled in the red broth, are actually tougher than the pork itself.
Along with your bowl of bones and potatoes you get piles of kicmchi and radish along with hot peppers and the tops of garlic shoots to dip in gochajong, you also get a couple of big empty bowls, after all where else would you throw the little bits of rib and spine?