Nom followed by bleeeugh

I went to a Korean barbecue restaurant with a couple of friends this week. The food was AMAZING. Well most of it but more of that in a sec.

So the set up is, there's a grill in the middle of the table and condiments in various bowls. The menu consists of a list of meat. Meat, meat and more meat. Brisket, steak, boneless ribs and you cook it all at your table. Once we got the hang of it, with the help of our extremely enthusiastic table neighbour, Wayne who was delighted to have a couple of newbies plonked next to him, we had a great time.

And the best bit (and the worst) is, it was all you can eat. $20 for as much meat as your constitution can take. As with all barbecues, we all ate too much. Soon, we were done but Wayne had other plans.

"I'm going to order a Korean speciality. This goes great with a drink!" he yelped as he filled up our glasses with more Soju, a Korean wine (think sake and fizzy water).

A second later a plate of intestines arrived at our table. My stomach did a double pike and my mate Simon's face drained of colour.

"Ummmm... I'm quite full" we all started pleading but Wayne had already thrown this stuff on our grill. "Thanks alot, you fucker" said Simon. "You've just put guts on our thingy" but Wayne was already pouring more Soju (and it's bad luck to pour your own apparently which means you end up drinking even more coz you drink when someone else thinks you should).

I was watching these organs sizzle thinking, "I feel like Hannibal fucking Lector".

Even Pete, the Aussie in our group who'd been so keen to try the delicacy earlier, was starting to have second thoughts as we watch the small intestines, not cook, but disintegrate. No matter how high the heat, they seemed to melt rather than grill. It was a grim sight. The large intestine, which looked like a German sausage, was fairing a little better. After what seemed like a millennium, they were cooked.

Simon looked at me with a piercing look. A look that said, you can waterboard me if you like but I am not eating this shite.

Pete and I tucked in to the large intestine which looked the most palatable. It wasn't too bad. Not quite the bush tucker trial I'd imagined. Then we had the small intestines. Bleugh. Just Bleugh. No other word does it justice. Imagine if you found a piece of liver under a sofa after about 6 months, times that by ten and that's the level of bleugh we're talking about.

This was no way to end what had until that point been a sumptuous banquet.

So we decided to do what any self respecting gang of Brits, Aussies and Irish would do, hit the karaoke upstairs where, with the help of Olivia Newton John, Eminem and Coldplay, we purge the memory of the guts.

The next day, in the car with Simon, who was nursing a little bit of a Soju hangover, I turned to him and said, "You know the one question we didn't ask yesterday"

"What?" he groaned.

"Intestines of what?" I said.

He groaned again and went even greener than he already was. "Can we not talk about guts. It's not really helping my state"

In many ways (in fact all ways) I actually don't want to know.