08. 17. LUNCH

새우볶음밥: shrimp fried rice

This meal courtesy of my mother. Not a whole lot to say about it, but that it was good, and Grandma was here for it, though she’d had lunch at church already. Things are peaceful. Somehow in the meanwhile I managed to get that blasted Harvest Moon DS game to the marriage point — it’s so hard to get back into HM once you pause playing, there are way too many things to keep in mind and if you can’t remember what you’re doing in real life, how do you expect to keep it together in a game? But after something like half a year on and off, the boy is wed and the crops are flourishing and what have you. I can finally quit without feeling like a quitter. The same cannot be said for Gyakuten Saiban OH GOD THE FRUSTRATION. I know how to get to the end of the case, all the evidence is in and it’s the last court session for the trial, but the emulator keeps crashing. KEEPS CRASHING. It’s not at the same point so it’s not really the fault of anything in particular, but I save state, save the game on the cartridge, save it all the ways I know how and SOMEHOW everything is deleted once the emulator crashes and I have to restart from the detective phase of the third court session and it is DUMB DUMB DUMB. What am I supposed to do about that? Ugh I don’t know. Maybe I should just download Apollo Justice or whatever the actual name is for the 4th game. By the way the English version kind of blows, everyone sounds a bit mean and the humor definitely drags compared to — no, wait, I can’t compare it to the original, I’ve never even played — well, compared to the unlicensed Korean version, at any rate. Mitsurugi I miss youuuu help me fix whatever is wrong with this game please.

08. 15. DINNER

해물파전: seafood pancake

Despite her assertions that she can and will make everything that is asked of her, my mother clearly has her specialties. This is one of them. The others being steamed egg custard, the soy sauce-based fried chicken, and some obvious others that I am forgetting because I haven’t had them in a while. If I was threatened with murder unless I picked out a shortcoming of this 파전, I would say that maybe the scallions need to be chopped up into two or three parts, since they are rather long as they are and it’s hard to separate them into bite-sized pieces. But that’s not really a shortcoming, that’s a preference, and we know our mother likes her vegetables as whole as possible. Do scallions count as vegetables? This is a useless question.

boiled squid

This is only partially relevant, since this is boiled squid, but — I find odd the idea of finding the eating of live octopus squeamish to behold. Does that sentence make any sense at all? My opinion is that there are things that can be eaten, and things that cannot be eaten, and octopus definitely belongs in the former category so it doesn’t really matter whether it’s dead or alive, cooked or raw. The only kind of live octopus I’ve had was at one of the many tiny, not-so-fancy Japanese restaurants near my high school, so the bits were really small and you couldn’t even feel them move once you had them in your mouth. So maybe I’m not the best judge of whether it’s gross or not. But the idea of it definitely doesn’t strike me as particularly unusual. Then again to the “cannot be eaten” category I would put every kind of bug out there (I would say “almost”, but I can’t think of an exception) and maybe modern furniture, so I am not all that encompassing. I have my limits.

08. 11. DINNER

bread with olive oil and oregano

I am rather glad that I am backdating all these meals because otherwise these entries might not have been so calm. We had pretty good food for dinner on the 10th (분식) and lunch on the 11th (fondue, or what may pass for it in moments of great hunger) as well — okay, let’s be honest, the fondue wasn’t actually good at all — but pretty much immediately after lunch on the 10th, the family entered one of its spells of yelling. So much yelling. We spent an entire afternoon at the museum because there was too much anger to do much of anything else, and I could feel it in my back for the whole day and all of the 11th. The standing around, I mean, not the anger. But anyway, by dinnertime of the 11th, things had calmed down somewhat so the meal wasn’t incredibly awkward or anything. Yeah, we do that sometimes. Yelling. But I digress. This Italian restaurant is called Bellamonte, another of those places we frequent as a family, and it has infinitely better food than Di Matteo. Score!

insalata caprese

Good times, good times. They told us that they couldn’t make the rucola pizza for us because the rucola that they had wasn’t fresh enough, but confusingly enough there was a whole bunch on top of the caprese salad. I couldn’t really tell that they weren’t fresh, but at any rate, aren’t the vegetables in a salad supposed to be fresher than, you know, the vegetables that get baked in a freaking oven along with massive amounts of cheese? Huh. Anyway, caprese, yay.

insalata di mare

I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the right name for it, but Italian isn’t one of the languages I even pretend to speak and the website seems to be down so I can’t look it up on their menu. We don’t usually order this, we go from the caprese salad to the rucola pizza to the seafood spaghetti with the baked top, but Dad was feeling it and he was paying so we went for it. Amazing stuff. For a restaurant that’s definitely got good food and has even been on TV a couple of times (then again, what with all these food-related shows, it’s hard to find a decent restaurant that hasn’t been on TV once or twice) the place sure is always empty. Also, I forgot to take a picture of the spaghetti with the baked top, which is a pity because it has that huge dough covering and all, but suffice it to say that it went where it was destined to go, namely down my esophagus.

mushroom pizza

And that’s not Italian for anything, but bear with me here. As I mentioned above, Bellamonte refused to serve us anything with rucola on it, except the caprese salad which totally had rucola on it, and we were too hungry to really argue with them so we just went for the mushroom pizza. I mean okay integrity is great but if you give me pizza like this I will definitely shut up. I really wanted to have the rucola, though, so that I could compare it to Di Matteo’s and laugh in the latter’s face. Then again, that means absolutely nothing because somehow they get more customers (must pay off being across the street from a university) and we will probably go there again. Damn you, habit and tradition!

팥빙수: shaved ice with red beans

I have chosen this summer’s keyword to be “정갈함”. This adjective means some supernatural combination of cleanliness, crispness, modesty, purity, and a good deal of empty space. Kind of like wearing nothing but cheap white fabric that’s been washed to a blinding level of whiteness. So in theory, I support this sort of shaved ice, the prevalence of white, the lack of fruit. But to be frank, Napoleon Bakery, your shaved ice tastes like a bowl full of bland. It’s a thin line between my ideal for this summer’s keyword and blandness, and this is still better than Burger King’s travesty so I forgive you, but you will not last long like this. It was a good move infusing the milk straight into the ice so that the shaved ice would have a flavor instead of being so many spoonfuls of water, but for some reason it doesn’t really work. Maybe you need more milk? Or some more of anything, just anything, I mean it’s very tame and it was cold and I enjoyed it, but can’t you do better for four dollars? Must you rob me of my money? Incidentally two hundred dollars was withdrawn from my account and my mother and I panicked and she sent me to the bank before she realized that it was just the automatic withdrawal for this fund that she signed me up for when she created the account. PSYCH

08. 10. LUNCH

냉모밀: cold buckwheat noodles

The 10th was our day off. We couldn’t travel anywhere because everyone had conflicting schedules and it would have taken way too long to get anywhere worthwhile just to come back after a day, so instead we decided to spend a day in the city eating whatever the hell we wanted. It was to compensate for all that money on hotels and transportation that we weren’t spending. For that I think we were scrimping a little, because the restaurants we went to were mid-range, maybe mid-high at the highest but I think I’m going to say mid- because that’s, you know, correct. If I’d been given the reins I’d have looked for someplace like that crab restaurant that I went to last time, someplace completely ridiculous and over-the-top, but unfortunately I’m the gluttonous one in the family and I think people know not to let me handle the choosing of the food, or all the budget goes down the drain in record time. Anyway, lunch on the 10th was at a Japanese restaurant — Nari.

assorted sashimi

So let me try to pretend I know what I’m talking about by trying to document which kind of fish is what. From the instantly recognizable red tuna, it goes counterclockwise — red tuna, flounder (광어), snapper (or bream, I have no idea) (도미), sea bass (농어), salmon, then different parts of flounder, snapper and sea bass respectively. This is quite a chore, looking up fish names. And in the middle, abalone, my love! They say the price of abalone’s been going down since the oil spill, but I am not seeing this reflected in my day-to-day life and I demand that it be reflected accordingly.

some sort of fantastic

I am not entirely certain what that was. It was like — a citrusy salad type thing with salmon and something crunchy on top that is such a bad description but honestly, I had two of those and I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe there doesn’t need to be an established name, amirite? Maybe it’s just the citrusy salad type thing with salmon. Who cares, it was pretty damn good.

assorted sushi

The eel was great, that’s not so surprising, but the thing to the left of it was also amazing and that did shock me. It was a kind of slightly-spicy tuna salad on top of rice, but it was really awesome and also something you don’t see that often. As for everything else, eh, I’d eat it if it was in front of me but I wouldn’t go looking for it. Especially not the shrimp. Any place that offers shrimp in its arsenal of sushi automatically gets a raised eyebrow from me — it is such filler material that it’s much too obvious to mention. Come on, guys! You can do better than shrimp!

assorted tempura

And now it is time to treat to one of my brilliant and incredibly not catchy neologisms. From the really bored person that brought you “Googlefeasting”, “Babelwhacking” and “boredcore” as well as a couple others even she doesn’t bother to remember, that’s how uninteresting they are, here it is — “THE TEMPURA HORIZON”. It refers to the point of time in a course meal, usually Japanese, when the tempura is brought out. That event marks the point from which there is no longer anything in particular to look forward to, because you know that the good stuff is ending, and even if there are some okay dishes after the tempura it’s still depressing because you are no longer “eating” a meal, the tempura signifies that you are “nearing the end” of your meal. Obviously it was modeled on the event horizon, since this is a similar point of no return. This feeling is somewhat similar to the sinking sensation you get at around half past three on a Sunday afternoon, knowing that you have school on Monday and that even though Sunday isn’t quite over yet, it is definitely ending. Wow, I think this is one of my better works. Stop trying to make the tempura horizon happen, self. It’s not going to happen.

알밥: rice with tobiko

And as much as I love 알밥, there is no denying that after the tempura, it is all just going to go terribly, terribly downhill. Not in terms of the quality of the food, mind you — but if you’ve ever experienced a Sunday afternoon, you already know what I am talking about. You can have inordinate amounts of fun on Sunday evening and still have that worry gnaw the pit of your stomach at half past three. But enough about that, here is my meal and I am going to have to put off backdating things for a bit because I am off to the dentist’s office. Whee!

07. 19. DINNER

새우볶음밥: shrimp fried rice

According to my mother, last week she made dinner for my brother once and he nearly burst into tears. This is simultaneously more and less amusing than you’d think. It is a completely logical reaction, considering that on other evenings he makes dinner, eats dinner, then does all the dishes. This may or may not be partially my fault, but then again is it my fault that I’m so insanely busy this vacation? (The correct answer is yes: doing away with German would free up everything after seven.) Anyway, so it’s not as big an overreaction as it sounds initially, but at the same time I am unfortunately capable of conjuring up the full mental image. This can under some circumstances be called funny. I prefer “ghastly”. Am I not making sense? Yet again? Well, honestly, I’m not stopping this this radio show until I get through a satisfying number of episodes, so you’re just going to have to deal with the nonsensical stringing together of phrases.

cold mochi

And this was for dessert! A student of my mother’s was invited for dinner, and she’d brought this. God they were so good, and I don’t even like mochi all that much. Wait, oh, Jesus God, so Zhuge Liang just left his little country cottage lair to set out into the wide chaotic world (…so now you know what I’m listening to. This is actually an oddly amusing rendition, the voice actors all sound like nightclub emcees.) — and the music they used was Gabriel’s Oboe from The Mission. Oh, are you kidding me! They are really careful with their music selection so it’s not like they were all HERE IS A NICE MOODY SONG HAY but WHAT DO THEY MEAN IF THAT’S NOT WHAT THEY MEANT? Is this an extended metaphor?! ZHUGE LIANG AS PLAYED BY JEREMY IRONS? SO ZHUGE LIANG GETS CLIPPED FULL OF BULLET HOLES WHILE TRYING TO CONVERT THE ADORABLE YET THICKHEADED CRETINS OF SHU HAN TO MARGINALLY CULTURED BEINGS WHO WILL PLEASE LISTEN TO HIM AND NOT ASK ALL THESE QUESTIONS ABOUT THINGS THAT ARE SO PAINFULLY OBVIOUS OKAY? Ugh, migraine. This show is legitimately funny. I am impressed. Was I talking about food? Is this a food blog? Where am I? Who am I?

07. 13. DINNER

appetizer with shrimp and clam

Actually it might not be clam. It might be abalone. But it might be clam, and I’m going to say that it’s clam, because this is not really the most important part of the post. So here’s the deal; every time we can, which is probably once or twice a year at most, the old comics club from high school meet up and proceed to squander away our earnings on some ridiculously outrageous item of food we happen to be obsessed with at the time. We did it before with beef, multiple times — this time around, it was crab. To be exact, crab sashimi. This is our version of an eating disorder, we go and we stuff our faces and then we purge our purses. It’s rather edifying, honestly.

steamed eggs with crab and mushroom

By this point, we were already in tears. It was just so warm, and so soft, and why do all words used to describe food always sound so drastically perverted? I especially feel Pedobear lurking around the edges of this one. But enough about Pedobear while talking about a hulking beast of a meal.

appetizer salad with some fantastic dressing

I’m not completely certain where the crab was in this. The meat appears to be pork. Or we thought it was pork. But at any rate, it also had cherry tomatoes and walnuts and pecans and croutons and an amazing sweet-sour dressing. It is going to be increasingly more difficult to add commentary to these pictures, so forgive me if you are spared my nonsensical babble. It is better for all of us.

crab gratin

Also, this is for reference, but the restaurant we went to was called Kora, and its website can be found at koracrab.co.kr. Their site insists that it’s only three hundred meters from the exit of the subway station to the restaurant, but this is a blatant lie. We walked at least twenty minutes just to get to the intersection.

crab soup

We suspect that this misinformation is their way of separating the desirable customers from the less desirable ones. Those who belong to the restaurant most likely will come by car, and thus have no problem reaching it whatsoever. Those, on the other hand, who choose to come by subway, don’t exactly deserve to be eating there. But we made it, through the fire and the flames. Suckers.

crab sashimi

This was our raison d’etre. It was actually a different sort than we’d expected, because we were thinking of a different species of crab, but nonetheless it was really good. I’m rather a fan now. It’s far from chewy, more a gelatinous glob, but it slides off the shell amazingly and the flavor is delightfully. odd. Oh, god, did I just reference what I think I referenced?

grilled crab

My promise of staying silent for this entry has been woefully compromised. Look, here, I’ll make better on it starting now.

steamed crab

crab, sweet potato and squash tempura

crab and noodles and mushrooms oh my

This was the last course, and when we could manage to speak for the joy that clogged our throats, we were very, very, very well satisfied. There was a small plate of fruit afterwards, which was rather disappointing a dessert considering the dimensions of the meal, but we made up for it by getting a dessert of our own that we started craving in the middle of the meal. This seems to be a popular pastime; talking about things you want to eat while eating something really good. Kind of like how I love watching food-related programs during dinner.

녹차빙수: green tea shaved ice with red beans

Ugh, this was so good too. My most recent frame of reference was the piece of crap from Burger King, but independent of that, it was an excellent specimen. The almonds especially, and I liked that they didn’t have fruit, which is only truly necessary when the other ingredients aren’t pulling their weight. Which they totally were. The almonds especially. We were actually going to get drinks from a convenience store and sneak them into a movie or something, but by this time it was magically ten at night and we had to disperse for fear of not being able to take public transportation home. And so we got this out of our system for another long while. The next item of interest is, currently, ostrich meat. If we can find it here out of the zoo.