08. 24. BREAKFAST

육개장: yukgaejang

That is much too sensible a caption for my tastes, but I am a bit worn out from the ranting in the previous post and you can always Wiki the word if you’re really curious. I see no reason why you should be, or would be — pretty standard fare. The only two things on the breakfast menu for the hotel were this and the beef rib soup from the day before. I think they’re being considerate to those with hangovers, but it’s ostensibly a family hotel and there were only two other groups we encountered that were lodging there, both families with tiny children. Anyway, again the soup was boiling hot and I wept to have to wait. But it was good. Honestly, I am all typed out for today but I still have a couple more posts lined up so bear with me if I don’t gush about everything I ever ate, even if it was very, very tasty, thank you Geoje Family Hotel.

08. 23. BREAKFAST

갈비탕: clear beef rib soup

Clear beef rib soup. It is ridiculous. I love it. The hotel we stayed at had two options, either you could reserve a room with a kitchen unit, or you could get a room without one but with breakfast service for free. Since obviously we weren’t going to be cooking anything anytime, we went for the latter. The hotel is situated amazingly, ours wasn’t the super magnificent best suite in the building exclusive partytime room or anything but we had this utterly gorgeous view, and those pictures aren’t going to be on this blog but seriously, this was such a great vacation. They served breakfast in the little cafe attached to the hotel, charming cushions, flowered wallpaper and everything. For all that the breakfast menu was stubbornly Korean, but I liked it. You need something hearty for a day’s worth of sightseeing. The catch was that they brought the food out to the table while it was still boiling fiercely, and since I am not so good with hot foods I had to let it sit for a long excruciating while until it was edible, and even then it was incredibly hot, but ugh so good. James Franco, where are you when I need you?

08. 22. LUNCH

fugu skin and mixed vegetables

I HAD FUGU. I couldn’t resist beginning with excitement, but honestly it isn’t anything to write home about. I was on vacation down south (no, not that far down south) from the 22nd to the 24th, and we stopped by our father’s residential city on our way so that we wouldn’t end up skipping lunch or something equally ridiculous. And there’s a semi-famous (= well-known but only in the near vicinity of the surrounding neighborhood) fugu restaurant there, so I couldn’t say no. But this story is not going to be very thrilling because we didn’t even have fugu sashimi — the lunch sets don’t come with that option, curse the stars — and isn’t a great deal of the fish not even dangerous anyway? Anyway, this lightly boiled fugu skin dish was the best out of the entire meal, I think, the skin is so chewy and fun and we had no idea what those vegetables were but they were also enjoyable.

deep-fried fugu

This is when I started realizing that what people say about how fugu would be a good deal less popular if it weren’t poisonous is all solid truth. Basically it tastes like any other whitefish out there. So it tastes like cod. Surely there is some distinct flavor of its own, but deep-frying isn’t really the most effective way to call forth the subtle nuances of the gustatory sensations, so yeah, it tasted like cod. And I’m not the biggest fan of cod — it’s good when it’s made into pancake form (tee hee) but the fish itself isn’t all that interesting. I’d much rather have whitefish as sashimi than cooked. But the fried fugu was crispy and really hot and by no means was it bad. It was just, you know, it tasted safe.

복어지리: clear fugu soup

It’s boiling! It’s boiling! So in the grand tradition of all fish-related restaurants, we got a huge pot of soup. Except this time we didn’t even order sashimi so — you know, the actual meat on the fish is supposed to be prepared as sashimi, and the leftover bits get tossed into the soup, so in this case — it’s a higher class of soup than customary, I guess, but we were just missing out on fugu sashimi. Which saddens me a little. But the 지리 was pretty good.

복어매운탕: spicy fugu soup

This was better, though. You can probably tell from the picture, but it also comes with dumplings (ten-o’clock) and noodles (three-o’clock). You can also see some of the fugu in the twelve-o’clock direction. I like the bits near the skin the best, since the meat isn’t as packed and dry as it is in other places. I feel like people who like chicken breasts like whitefish, it’s pretty much the same thing, flaky and boring. I mean come on. Seriously. But it was a good meal, especially for the paltry price of eight dollars — I’m not complaining! But one day I will have fugu sashimi and then properly state that I’ve had the blasted fish.

08. 03. LUNCH

cream of corn soup

I have a few complaints to register. Never mind that registering complaints is what I’m mostly doing at all hours of the day, but this is really important. Kind of. Well, no less important than all my other complaints. Just listen. Except you’re not the people that should be listening — get me the owner of Paris Croissant, COEX branch. Whoever decided that it was okay to “upgrade” a perfectly decent restaurant into a disgustingly overpriced venue where nothing is cheaper than fifteen dollars — wait, no, this is wrong, that doesn’t make it sound expensive enough, but it totally is, and most things are in the twenty to thirty-dollar range anyway, but my point is, someone went ahead and made a restaurant less accessible to me without asking my permission first and this angers me. Also your cream of corn soup was only decent! It was okay, but I wouldn’t murder for it! So take that!

parpadelle with tomato sauce

Obviously, the fact that I’m not really crazy about cream of corn soup to begin with has no bearing, because it’s not like I dislike it, and if you’re going to up the price by that much, the least you can do is give me soup that makes me want to raze down the rest of the mall just so that you can set out a couple more tables. But I could have forgiven this, after all it’s unsightly to complain about the cost of food especially when there are more affordable restaurants at hand. But what I really can’t stand is that you took my favorite item off the menu, you idiots! Actually they probably overhauled the entire menu, but the only thing I can distinctly remember having here and nowhere else is this — this salad, with really thin slices of beef brisket and this great dressing that came in a loooong dish and I am tearing up even though I have totally talked about all this before. The force of my rage can only be aptly expressed through Internet acronyms: HDU, Paris Croissant. HDU. IDAWTC. GTFO STFD and DIAF >:O

margherita pizza

And if you are going to tell me THAT’S BASIL sprinkled on top of your pizza I WILL END YOU. Okay so the pizza was okay. I mean no, it wasn’t! It’s just regular cheese pizza with cherry tomatoes and basil lying pathetically over it! This is not a battlefield!! I mean, for cheese pizza it was pretty good though. And the Parpadelle was acceptable. I guess. BUT NO! YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE MY WRATH! That is if by wrath you mean me typing to myself on this remote little online corner while your restaurant flourishes under the patronage of first-date couples, an alarmingly large number of which seem to crowd COEX on weekends. I mean come on, people, there are better places to go hang out than at the mall. Leave the mall to the people without dates, and you families, you guys go to amusement parks or something, take the kids outside. Gosh. Some people.

07. 21. DINNER

grilled salmon

I am developing a knack for grilling fish! Basically you alternate between having the heat on full blast and attempting in a silly fashion to steam it by turning the heat down and putting a lid on the frying pan. And then you check anxiously every ten seconds or so. Then when you think that the entire thing is so burnt that it would probably taste like wood and ashes, give it five more minutes. Then it is done! Delicious delicious fish. That doesn’t taste like wood and ashes. And is actually thoroughly cooked. I am a miracle worker.

올갱이국: marsh snail soup

Alright, this is definitely not the right name. I just can’t find an alternative. These aren’t snails, they’re more like very tiny freshwater conches — that is, if conches are actually snails — are they? — then I guess these might be snails, but as far as I know they aren’t famous for living in marshes. They’re usually found on cold mountain stream beds or something, or I could be completely confused and making all of this up. At any rate, they taste so incredibly good even when the soup comes out of an airtight packet and is suspiciously easy to cook. What I would much rather be having is a paper cup full of hot steamed tiny freshwater conches that they have at the feet of hiking trails, and then, you know, not actually do the hiking. Mmm.

07. 19. LUNCH

grilled salmon, bean paste soup (된장찌개) and rice

Yes, this is some sneaky backdating going on here. Now that I feel better and this is a more interesting meal than I’ve had in a while, I’m posting like a thief in the night. Score! So this is what I had for lunch after the translation seminar on Saturday, and I vow to eat as best as I possibly can since the cost is coming out of the seminar’s budget. Score!! On the less bright side, there is actual translating going on and I really need to look over this short story but — but I — but there is more to life than this. Translating is an obligation, but everything else is — am I making any sense at all? I suspect that I’m not actually, because I’m listening to a radio show as I type this and as we learned, the phonological loop can’t work on anything else once it’s already occupied. Which is why teachers need to go easier on kids who doodle in class, because they’re using their visuo-spatial sketchpad while listening to the teacher — or while not listening to the teacher, but that’s no fault of the doodling. Have I stopped making sense again? My point is that salmon goes remarkably well with 된장찌개 and that doodling should be subsidized by the government.

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.