because he travels often between kija (joseon / korea) and jinou (qing / china), seong jin technically has a rather refined palate. he eats both korean and chinese food well, despite the differences, but it’s only during business or when he’s with guests. he otherwise is a very picky eater!
he doesn’t like a lot of the side dishes that are generally served in korean meals. he’s vaguely alright with beansprouts, pickled eggplant is awful, he hates seafood (especially squid and clam) that isn’t just fish, he’d rather not have kkaetnip (i’m not sure what this is called in english) if he can help it, etc etc. honestly, he mostly lives off of just rice, kimchi, and dried salted seaweed (and even then, kimchi isn’t as nearly as accessible as it is today, so sometimes he just straight up eats rice and seaweed). but most of these foods isn’t that he can’t eat it with how much he hates it, but he’d rather not eat it because he doesn’t like the taste or texture. but he does like spicy food a lot, and if there’s spice on the dish, even if he doesn’t like the ingredients, he’ll try it. noodles are usually okay, he really likes bibinmyun and cold noodles.
basically, he eats like either a child or a college student. though most of the reasoning for his pickiness is just because his diet was always childish, especially after his mom died, he also isn’t too happy about eating, because his ability to hear the voices of inanimate objects makes for a rough meal.
the money he gets from being in the seokga usually go towards living expenses, so he’s fine with getting by, but because he has such a limited amount of dishes he actually likes, inns might not serve what he asks for, in which case he goes for rice and seaweed (and maybe like, a beansprout soup / seaweed soup on the side?) so his food bills end up being super cheap LSKFD;MGMLK
