Seoul: Food

Interrupt the usual dose of flaming with something nice: more belated pics of Seoul, this time of all the yummy yummy food we had there.

Our very first meal in Seoul.

Assorted grilled stuff. Got egg, got pork, got chicken, got beans. Very nice.

The food in Seoul is really nice; in fact, it is the second fave thing I look forward to everyday, after bed time in our nice cosy hotel. Sadly though, it is quite challenging to find food, or at least, local food.

On the first morning we woke up and started exploring the hotel vicinity. Just outside the hotel, we bypassed a whole street of food stores without eating anything cuz we weren't hungry yet. Big mistake. We got hungry awhile later and could not find a single food store after walking a few blocks. Thanks to some form of convoluted central planning, it seems the streets in Seoul are arranged thematically. We passed by whole streets selling handicrafts, jackets, plants but no luck with food. Eventually we reached the subway station and discovered we had walked 3 subway stops from our hotel.

We found a food store eventually and we encountered the next problem: language. We target stores that have english wordings on the outside [and thus an english menu], but these are few, especially for local local food. This store that we found had english words [yay!] but it seems they were only for show [boo!]. The shop auntie didn't understand a single bit of english. She did understand some Chinese though, so we managed to order some food in the end.


Yummy pork knuckle soup. The pork was really tender and juicy and it literally melts in your mouth. The soup base was flavourful and thick like gravy. This was easily the best dish I had for the whole journey. KM wasn't too impressed though; I think it's because he's a very conservative eater.


KM's cold noodle. He wasn't so lucky. Apparently auntie's chinese was even worse than mine; she understood noodle in chinese, but she ended up serving cold noodles. It's really quite nice but I think being up so early in the morning, walking an hour plus in the spiteful cold kinda makes appreciating cold noodles abit hard.

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Language would continue to haunt us in our neverending quest for local food. There was this time we went into this local store out of desperation. We resorted to using Lonely Planet: pointing at the korean words in this food glossary section. It worked quite well: I got a nice stewed beef rice while KM finally got the hot noodles he craved for.

The irony is where English failed us, we can count of Chinese. Apparently alot of Korean food stores employ Chinese help, abit like how we employ Fillipinos, so on a couple of occasions, we could order through them.

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We did capitulate once or twice. We had Burger King once. And Vietnamese food.


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Another morning we had breakfast at this atas cafe. After we ordered the food at the counter, they gave us this coaster looking thing to bring back to the table.

KM hypothesized that it was just an elaborate token we use to collect our food from the counter when it is done. I felt that it would fly to the counter when our food was ready. Reality was a compromise: it started playing a monophonic tune and flashing lights.


KM had this weird alien-y green tea concoction. He lived to say it tasted weird.

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I can't talk about Seoul food without talking about the donuts. The Seoul people love their donuts! Just beside our hotel was this three storey donut cafe: Doughnut Plant.

The donuts here are so-so lar. I think they appeal to a health-conscious crowd, using whole wheat bread for the donut so generally I think the place sucks.

Just a block away is a 3-storey Krispy Kreme and opposite that is Dunkin Donuts.

Basically hor, I think Dunkin Donuts and the Doughnut Plant live on the leftover crowd from Krispy Kreme. At any one time from 10 am to 10 pm, the queue at Krispy Kreme is super duper long; the only reason I am able to get my daily KK fix is because I live next to it. For some reason, after a certain time, they start giving out donuts. I haven't figured out the exact formula yet [it's not a simple buy one get one free concept], but on average I get at least one extra donut, and there was once I ended up buying 2 donuts and leaving the place with 5. Coolness.

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Another bit of funny-ness. We were at this ginseng chicken restaurant. Seriously, you know you are allergic to alcohol, people put one small cup of clear yellow-ish liquid that is cold, you gulp it down in one second before anyone can react: you are asking for a very bad allergy reaction.

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Last meal:

From Seoul: Food

Option T.

chatterbox

Alot of things to say but tomorrow must wake up early early to kick some butt [or get kicked] so I will just talk about the funnest thing today: Chatterbox at Meritus Mandarin! Thanks to my wonderful colleague.


They shifted le. To their ex-revolving restaurant on the 38th floor. Here we can still see the mechanisms in place. The new location has alot more ambience than the old one; it's no longer literally a chatterbox because the seats are more spaced out. Only slight bad thing: the floor creaks.

















We had lobster laksa which is alot nicer than it looks on the already very nice picture except the serving is quite small even for a small eater like me.


I totally cleaned the bowl.

The view is also uber [pity the restaurant doesn't revolve anymore]. Who needs the silly Singapore Flyer to get a good view when you can just come to the Chatterbox? I think it costs $38 for a 30 minutes ride, $62 to add in a cocktail [i imagine you get one teensy cocktail to last you the whole experience]. For the reasonable cost of Chatterbox meal, you get the same view while eating yummy good. Good things in life don't have to be priceless.


Note this other pic. The green patch of greenery which the black patch of clouds seems to have taken a liking to is the Istana. Something wicked this way comes.


Misc musings: HSBC and UOB cardholders get discount. High tea on Saturdays and Sundays at $29.90++.

saycheesecake

Lovely dinner at


Laksa Chowder. Easily the best dish I had in a long time, and the best dish the place offers.


Royal Lobster Bisque. Finally, lobster bisque in Singapore that's better than the one I used to have almost daily at HK MacDonald's, which was really good.



The main course! Classic palle or something like that. Basically italian short grain [riso] with seafood and chicken. This was the dish that attracted our attention in the first place, and I think expectations were too high: it was quite a disappointment. The rice was too dry for riso, there were not enough peppers, and the tastes were not subtle enough.


Desert! Green Apple Crumple. Well the place is called cheesecake so you know the cheesecake has to be good. And it is.

HK Oct 2007: Food

So I made a quicktime slideshow of the yummy food I had in HK. Just click the yellow arrows to navigate [may have to take awhile for the file to load first though].



I can honestly say that food was one of the few things I was looking forward to in HK. We commonly went to Nganlung, situated just below our guesthouse. I went there almost every chance I got.

Having been to quite a bit of countries, I still think that food in Singapore, or at least the food I can generally afford is, is nothing more than supposedly edible foodstuffs ruined in oil. Gross.