A Food Entry

The new Vietnamese place that opened up right across the street from the ritzy cafe that has become my nightly haunt (if only because they have internet access) has just confirmed itself as a "place people may eat alone at." Those kind of restaurants are something of a rarity in this city.

Eating seems to be a big thing. Most restaurants seat on on cushions on the floor at a long table. Your food is brought out raw and cooked right in front of you. Each table has a crater of sorts cut out of the middle. A guy in an apron and heavy duty gloves brings a bucket full of red-hot coal and lays them carefully inside. They slide a grate over it and (since you're a foreigner who obviously has no idea what to do next) they lay everything out on the grate for you. While it cooks you pick at the side dishes. And there are hundreds of them. Well, maybe not hundreds. There's usually a plate of lettuces and leaves (especially if you're grilling meat, you can make lettuce wraps), some kind of pickled radish, and at LEAST 3 kinds of kimchi. They also like raw garlic and hot sauce. Mostly want I'm recounting is our last Korean meal of galbi - marinated pork. But my chicken soup meal with Tack Youn was presented in much the same way (except for the fact that we sat on chairs), and so was my distant-memory bi bim bap lunch with Nam Hee.

Going to Korean restaurants is slightly terrifying. Nothing is in English, we never know what we're ordering. I tend to only return to places I've been to with a Korean. Besides, these restaurants are all group-oriented. There is SO much food. I find I lose my appetite rather quickly when I eat Korean. This is necessarily because I eat my fill; there's something about the consistency of taste present in the main dish and the side dishes. My mouth tires of eating the same thing for so long. I'm not yet used to the taste of this country.

The good thing is that I still adore school lunches. There I am in control of the portions and there is a wide variety of food: always rice and soup (veggie broth, kimchi broth, or pungent miso - my favorite is the seaweed soup), some kind of mild kiddie-kimchi, and then 3 or 4 wildcards. I don't know the proper names for any of this stuff, but I'm a huge fan of something I believe to be strips of dried fish-something. It's really, really chewy and has a nice sweetness to it. I also love the tiny little boiled eggs soaked in soy sauce.

Anyway, back to the Vietnamese place. It's one more restaurant I now feel comfortable going to alone. And, of course, it's a noodle place. Like the Korean noodle place a few blocks away from it where I've been a few times, and the dearly-beloved but positively mediocre Japanese place right around the corner from our apartment where I get noodle soup dirt cheap.

When you come visit I promise I'll try to stick to the authentic Korean places. One of these days I might even manage to get to one of those restaurants with the live fish tanks outside. Won't that be fun?