How will you eat KIMCHI?

Remember way back before we ever came to Korea when we found the Korean restaurant? I remember being so proud of ourselves.

Well, last weekend we went to lunch with Birth Father, SangKwun, ChunPing, my aunt, uncle, and cousin. While I was off getting everyone coffee, Mark told me that Birth Father was asking how we would be able to eat Korean food when we go back to the States. (Because God forbid our diet should lack kimchi... haha, actually I have a feeling I will be totally craving it.)

He said that the Korean restaurant in St. Louis is 맛없어요... not delicious. But then he said he noticed there was a Korean market next to the restaurant that had everything we would need. So he told Mark that he needed to learn how to cook Korean food for me.

YESSSS... even with the language barrier Birth Father fully understands how our relationship works. Mark cooks... I eat. Truly the perfect marriage. :)

Spice discrimination

Today Mark and I were out and decided to stop at a noodle restaurant for some 비빔국수 (bibim guksu). It's basically a cold spicy red noodle soup. As we were eating it, I felt my lips and tongue tingling and broke out into a serious sweat. Meanwhile, Mark was happily chowing down on his bowl.

I asked him several times if he thought it was pretty spicy, and he kept saying, "No, it's good."

"Sheesh, I thought I'd gotten pretty good at eating spicy food, but Mark's STILL kicking my butt." I thought to myself. About 5 bites in, my entire face felt like it was lit on fire and I had to stop.

Once he finished his bowl, Mark leaned over and helped himself to my bowl. He immediately said, "Woah, this is a lot more spicy than mine was..."

So apparently the restaurant had taken it easy on the spiciness for the white guy and amped it up for the Korean...

Meanwhile, I'm just happy to know that Mark isn't better than I am at eating spicy Korean food. :)

Korean cooking

Mark found an awesome Korean cooking blog with video demonstrations. The host is this adorable Korean lady who lives in Toronto. She's so spunky and cute and the recipes we've tried so far have been amazing. You can check it out at Maangchi if you're interested!

The first thing we tried was kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae -- 김치찌개). It was so tasty... but I only recommend it if you can handle some spiciness.

Tonight we experimented with panfried tofu in soy sauce (dubu ganjangjolim -- 두부 간장조림) and breaded cod fillets (daegujeon -- 대구전). It was really good, except the cod had tiny bones in it. Next time we'll have to get the boneless cod.

Tomorrow night we're going to make stir fried noodles with meat and vegetables (japchae -- 잡채).

Korean food recap

Korea is definitely the place to be if you're an adventurous food lover. SanGwun and my Father are dead set on making me gain weight here and keep saying they want me to get a "fatter face," though that is certainly NOT my goal.

The problem with all the food is that when it's put in front of us, Mark and I always start eating and forget to take a picture. But here are a few of the different dishes we've eaten here that we've managed to capture on film.

This should look familiar to most people, it's Japanese sushi. We got some of the sashimi, rolls (which I like much better), and randomly, a cajun chicken salad. The restaurant was located in Myeong-dong, the shopping district, and very good!

Then we found a place near Father's apartment that we've gone a couple times for lunch on our own. The dish below is the traditional BBQ'd beef that you put in a lettuce wrap.

And this dish was one of Mark's favorites. It was clams, and though I was a little nervous, I ended up liking them a lot!

Here are some pictures from a Korean Hot Pot restaurant that Father took us to. Emily tells us that Hot Pot is a very popular meal in China, but this is slightly different than the Chinese Hot Pot. 

There was a big pot in the middle of the table that is divided into two. They poured broth in both, and one side was to cook the beef and the other side cooked the seafood. 

They brought out the big plate of seafood below. I am still not brave enough to try the squid/octopus on the left side of the plate.

Here's the divided pot to cook the meal.

In addition to the seafood and meat, there are a bunch of vegetables to add to the pot including: a lot of leafy vegetables, mushrooms, rice cakes, and dumplings. You can either heat up the meat in the pot fondue style, or you can add all the meat and create more of a stew. 

Then, as the pot simmers and you get halfway through the meal, they add noodles to the pot to make the meal more of a soup.

Finally, at the end of the meal, when all the veggies and meat are eaten, rice and egg are added to the broth to create a sticky, eggy rice.

This was one of our favorite new meals we've experienced so far in Korea. I've posted a video of the creation of the hot pot below.

The roof... the roof... THE ROOF IS ON FIRE

K: And when I refer to "the roof," I mean OUR MOUTHS. I knew Koreans like spicy food, but good Lord, is my tongue going to survive next year?

We went back to the Korean restaurant we discussed here and here. This time we decided we were ready to order some soup, which we've heard is a staple meal in Korea. We ordered a Kimchee soup and a spicy Korean BBQ with chicken. We should've been wary when the waitress asked if we wanted our meals "normal" or "Korean" spicy. We decided to be conservative and selected normal. This can be chalked up as one of the smartest decisions we have ever made.

The Kimchee soup arrived piping hot (actually still boiling). We both took a spoonful and the extreme warmth of boiling hot soup was immediately blown out of the water by the intense sensation I felt as my tastebuds went from "on fire" to numb. My nose imediately began pouring sweat.

But the surprising thing is that the spicyness is strangely addicting. I literally couldn't stop eating it even though I was sweating and chugging water. And I really think I wouldn't hesitate to order this dish again.

One helpful tip Mark and I discovered was that after an especially spicy bite to shovel rice in our mouths. The rice kind of serves as the spice buffer. Good to know. I have a feeling I'll be eating pounds and pounds of rice in Korea. :)

Here's a picture of the mouth-burning lava soup.


And here's the spicy BBQ chicken, which didn't offer much relief to our tongues.

Delayed post...

K: This post is about a month late in coming, but I've finally uploaded the pictures. Hannah and Michael went with us to the Korean Restaurant we blogged about earlier. Here's the evidence!

This picture can be very deceiving because it looks like the restaurant is very fancy and nice... definitely not the case. I think we posed in the one area of the restaurant with greenery and wood paneling. And that's not a white tablecloth, it's a big sheet of white shop paper. But the food is very, very tasty.


It's kind of funny the number of sides that come out when there are four of you! It's like these little white bowls went on as far as the eye could see!

Anyone else interested in trying out some Korean food? Just let us know! :)

Korean Food: First Impression

K: We decided to celebrate our purchasing of the tickets by going out to eat this past Saturday night. What better time to try our first Korean meal? Our choices for Korean restaurants in St. Louis our somewhat limited, but we were advised to try The Korean Restaurant (not kidding, that is the actual name of the place) by a Korean friend of ours. It is supposed to be very authentic and is located at Olive and Fee Fee.

Well we ended up trying it and really liked it. We took some pictures of the place --- for you guys. And of the food --- for us, so we can remember what we liked/didn't like. We highly suggest trying it!

This was the outside of the restaurant - not overly impressive. But Mark and I have decided that the shabbier many Asian restaurants look, the better the food.



Though we didn't sit at one, you can request to sit at a table with a hotplate. They also bring this wok-like grill to the table to cook your food and keep it hot. From some of our Korea research, this seems to be a very popular style of eating over there. We'll be requesting a table like this next time.

Koreans typically serve a bunch of sides with their meals. This restaurant brought out these six side dishes, which we found very tasty. Mark especially liked the two middle dishes, although we still aren't sure what the one in the middle-right was. The one closest to us is Kim Chi, which is a staple dish served with every meal.

This was the appetizer we ordered. It is the Korean version of a sushi roll, only it had meat in it and wasn't served with soy sauce. We can't remember the name, but think it was Kim Bop?

Finally, the entrees. Mark got the Korean spare rib dish. I got the Korean BBQ (which I liked so much I forgot to take a picture). The meat was already cut off the bone so you could use chop sticks to eat it.

We were very impressed. We think we chose "safe" dishes this time, and will try to be a little more adventurous next time around. If anyone would like to go with us, just say the word!