Entries tagged with 'Snapshots from South Korea'
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Last month I visited Seoul, South Korea, Here's a look at something I ate from my trip. For more, check out the rest of my Snapshots from South Korea. For a city where most people don't speak English, Seoul does a good job (and seems to be constantly trying to improve) accommodating English-speaking tourists and expats. Metro announcements are made in Korean and English, streets signs have English translations, and every taxi has a sticker with a phone number you can call if you need a translator. But what if you're clueless about Korean food? Tourists without a Korean speaker by their side may end up ordering something they don't like, or forgo a meal altogether since they can't read...
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Last month I visited Seoul, South Korea, Here's a look at something I ate from my trip. For more, check out the rest of my Snapshots from South Korea. My last day in Seoul was, unfortunately, the most miserable in terms of weather. Non-stop rain meant awkwardly lugging around bags and an umbrella all day, walking around in damp shoes, and having little desire to whip out my dSLR and take photos of the gloomy city. But it ended in one of the best ways possible: with a mountain of pork. Accompanied by food bloggers Dan Gray and Fat Man Seoul, chef Rachel Yang and Soo Hyang Choi of the Institute of Traditional Korean Food, I got my wish of...
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Last month I visited Seoul, South Korea, Here's a look at something I ate from my trip. For more, check out the rest of my Snapshots from South Korea. "This is it," Rob said while pointing to a window full of bubbling mini-cauldrons of stew on top of a gas range. My eyes grew wide. Some girls are enticed by windows full of jewelry or shoes; I'm all about the seething pots of stew. Or rather, I'm all about the single-dish restaurants. Ddukbaegi Jip, or Hot Pot/Stew House, is the haven of stew that stood before us. This small, homey restaurant only serves four items: boiled snails with doenjang (fermented soybean paste), doenjang jjigae (fermented soybean soup), soondubu (soft tofu...
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Last month I visited Seoul, South Korea, Here's a look at something I ate from my trip. For more, check out the rest of my Snapshots from South Korea. "There's a place nearby that serves food like you'd find in a school canteen, but a little more upscale," said Terry Rah, my friend and food guide for the morning. "Do you want to check it out?" Back in the U.S., I don't think the prospect of eating at a restaurant that served food akin to a school cafeteria's would ever appeal to me. I'm still haunted by the Aramark-made pizza, nachos, and sandwiches from my high school cafeteria. But Korean school food is a different matter, certainly not reminiscent of...
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Last month I visited Seoul, South Korea, for the first time. Here's a look at something I ate from my one-week trip. For more, check out the rest of my Snapshots from South Korea. Patbingsu, a shaved ice-based dessert loaded with sweet toppings such as chopped fruit, condensed milk, fruit syrup, and red beans, is so popular in South Korea that you can find it at most fast food restaurants in addition to cafes and bakeries. One of my friends even highly recommended the version from KFC ("My family went there all the time during our trip to Seoul!"). Although I wouldn't have been opposed to breaking my patbingsu virgnity at KFC, it was probably for the best that Dan...
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Last month I visited Seoul, South Korea, for the first time. Here's a look at something I ate from my one-week trip. For more, check out the rest of my Snapshots from South Korea. If I had planned my trip to Seoul better I would've tried to document as prolific themes in food-related signage as I could—some major ones being chicken and hof restaurants, and anything advertising waffles (a huge trend at the moment). But the only one I planned to capture from the beginning was the many different convenience stores throughout the city. What's fascinating about convenience stores? Probably not much if you grow up around them, but for those of us who haven't (such as my Northern New...
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Last month I visited Seoul, South Korea, for the first time. Here's a look at something I ate from my one-week trip. For more, check out the rest of my Snapshots from South Korea. I saw many street vendors selling browned sugar disks-on-sticks during my week in Seoul, but I didn't feel compelled to actually try one until one night in Jongno when, after a failed attempt to get a deep fried french fry-encrusted hot dog, I just wanted to try...something. Preferably something that wouldn't rattle my stomach at midnight (which the hot dog wouldn't have fit into, so it's probably a good thing that I couldn't find it). As the stall with freshly made sugar disks seemed non-threatening, I...
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Last month I visited Seoul, South Korea, for the first time. Here's a look at something I ate from my one-week trip. It wasn't until I had asked friends for food recommendations in Seoul that I first heard of temple cuisine, traditional vegetarian (or vegan, to be more specific) food served at Buddhist temples. Because I can't just eat fried things and noodles all the time, I was grateful to come across Sanchon ("Mountain Village"), one of the most famous restaurants in Seoul (and worldwide) that specializes in temple-inspired cuisine, while walking around Insadong with Rachel Yang and her mother on my last full day in South Korea. The restaurant was opened in 1981 by Kim Yon Shik, a former...
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The popular street food hotteok (hoddeok, hodduk, or if I were to say it out loud, ho-duck) is a brown sugar, cinnamon, and nut-filled pancake-like dessert found on the streets of South Korea. The first time I came across it with Dan Gray, I didn't know what I was looking at. Me: [while passing a truck with a big sign in Korean] "Do I wanna eat whatever's in that truck?" Dan: "Yeah, it's hotteok!" Me: "OH GOD, YES." (This is how I speak in real life. I try to tone it down in my writing.) This truck in I-don't-know-where Seoul made the healthier baked version of hotteok, as opposed to the deep fried version I would come across the...
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Earlier this month I visited Seoul, South Korea, for the first time. Here's a look at something I ate from my one-week trip. Myeongdong Gyoja is the only sit-down restaurant I've every been to that requires payment right after you order at your table and provides you with gum—Lotte xylitol gum to be exact—before any food appears. Paying up-front wasn't that strange, but what was the gum for? I'd find out very soon. Myeongdong Gyoja is famous for their kalguksu, knife-cut noodle soup. My fooding partner Dan Gray of Seoul Eats told me that lines frequently form out the door for this 40-year-old restaurant, which he described as making "the Model T of kalguksu." (We happened to arrive at a...
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