Peter Green

Hongeo – skating away Okay, I promised I'd write about this. Skate's a fish I have fond memories of. Ages back, on Cordova St in Vancouver, there was a small French restaurant I'd take Yoonhi to - La Marmite. One of their dishes that I'd have on regular basis was fried skate with capers. The meat was chewy, and very fresh. Good memories of the 1970s. But, in Andong, skate are wrapped up in straw and left for a long, long time to ferment. Here’s where it gets interesting. When you consider the skate, it seems that, lacking the usual tackle, they excrete through their skin. This in turn gives them a distinctive smell, somewhat akin to the bathroom in a backwoods Kenyan pub. (And this explains the lemons that we saw in the tank at Noryangjin Market earlier). Basically, you’re pickling this in its own urine. If you remember my comments on the smell of bundaeggi (simmered silk worm larvae)……well….hongeo makes that seem like kid’s stuff. You can eat it plain as is. You can eat it in a soup. And it’s famous for dumplings. FMS describes it as “like chewing on a rubbery urinal cake”. And, as bad as this sounds, it’s addictive. I’ve got to get to Andong next trip!

March 23 (still) – A Wee Dram Our next phase had to involve drinking. FatManSeoul (whom I will now abbreviate to FMS) had a favourtie spot not too far away. This was over at the Hyehwa Rotary. I messed up with the name, thinking it was “Beautiful Ghetto”, but FMS has advised that that was just a play their were advertising. This area is the “off Broadway” theatre district of Seoul, it would seem. When most of Seoul University moved south of the river it left behind a solid imprint of university culture, with a host of small theatres as well as a number of interesting food and drink alternatives like this one. And, if you want makkeoli and dongdongju, you need to find this culture. I wanted to find it. Scud wanted to go home. The good thing about kids this age is you can just point them at the underground, and sooner or later they’ll get where they’re supposed to be. You just hope they have all of their organs when they get there. Like Song’s Kitchen, the décor is fun. The bookshelves of planks and bricks are an immediate note of nostalgia for anyone who’s done university time. Plus, they keep a selection of extra guitars on hand if the mood should take you. It’s Asia, so we’re going to be eating with this. But first, drinking! We started with standard, good old makkeoli. Poured from a kettle. Cloudy in body, and with that distinctive tang. This was a much richer drink than the bottled stuff I’d been making do with back at home. First up for food was our chon. Packed with spring onion and seafood, you tug at it with your chopsticks and get a piece to chase down your makkeoli. We talked, of course, about food and drink. Mainly about food. FMS has worked outside of Seoul, and is a wealth of knowledge on Andong, the source of many of the foods on display at the exhibit we took in back in 2007. And, in discussing Andong, we also touched upon soju. Soju in the provinces can be a much different thing to what we find in Seoul. In Andong the traditional soju will run at 90 proof, and, according to FMS, has the taste of “drinking gym socks, in a pleasant way”. I can work with that. But, there was no traditional soju here, and our purpose was makkeoli, the farmer’s drink. Next was the nurungji makkeoli. This has the flavour of burnt rice scrapings from the bottom of the pot. This is a flavour that was almost lost when the modern rice cookers came into fashion, with their perfect cooking failing to burn the bottom. Now there are factories that purposefully burn rice to make commercial nurungji. However, given that they’re making their own stuff here (at least the next kettle-full was), I expect they’re burning their own rice here. And you certainly smell the nurungji. The third beverage on their list was sweet bean makkeoli. This was so thick that I’d think of it more as a dongdongju. We were still talking about Andong. Beside the soju, Andong had also come to national attention with the Andong chicken craze of a few years back. This was chicken, potatos, carrots, and onion simmered in a sweet soy base, and then served with the stretchy mung bean noodles (dangmyen). The owner thought well of his fish, so, having finished our chon, we had this brought out, butterfly’d and grilled. This also gave us an excuse to order more makkeoli. FMS also talked of another famous Andong dish that’s managed to fasten itself on what’s left of my brain. But let me talk about that in the next post. When it came time to leave, the owner chatted with us about video projects and performances. Like Song’s Kitchen, I could see how this sort of a place could get to be regular, being more than just a bar. And so, a relatively early night, even with the long commute back south to Jason’s place. Next: Hongeo

March 23 – Song of the North When we did dinner at Star Chef the other day, FatManSeoul had had some very good things to say about a restaurant on the North side of the city. And Zen had chimed in on this. That’s enough incentive to get me going on a death march. My intention, following upon Insadong for culture (and some food), was to head towards the Chongngo 3 Ga subway station, and from there head up to Hanseong University by rail. En route to the station, however, amidst the omnipresent stalls selling chon and fried egg rolls (with spring onion and sometimes seaweed – “gim” - and odaeng and deokbokki and I’m getting hungry again…….) I found something that I’d only heard about in legends. The Korean donut….fresh from the oil! Yoonhi remembers this from her tip back in the late 70s. If it’s bread based, and you can open it up…..put coleslaw in it. You may have to squint a bit, but there they were. Sugared buns stuffed wih cabbage and mayonnaise. Plus, you can get them with glow in the dark neon red sauce. Yoonhi things the one you see just to the left may be mayonnaise filled. And there’s an even chance that the sugar coated ones to the right will have a sweet bean filling (ppat) like the goldfish. I was still walking off the Insadong stuffing, and Scud refused to eat one for me. What’s the point in having children, I ask? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Rising like Orpheus from the underworld, Scud (hardly Eurydice, but what the Hades) was hard upon my heals….which is a fancy way of saying he was lagging back there somewhere complaining about my dragging him all over the place. We were heading North up the main drag – Seongbukdonggil -from Hanseong station. This was like another world from the towering (okay, maybe stooping) high rises of the South. Villas, open streets, cafes…..the first “large” building to catch my eye was a bakery, Napoleon (which FatMan tells me is famous in its own right - and please jump in here, anyone, with details to relate!). Okay, this isn’t quie the same culture shock you get going into Yongsan base. That’s another level of weird. That’s like a trip into Pleasantville, with M16s. This had a nice…..neighborhood feel to it. Something more than the concrete jungle I was growing used to south of the Han. Of course, with any Korean neighborhood, there’s food. There were the usual chains. I was growing used to seeing Two Two everywhere, with it’s logo of “chicken.draft beer.drink”……… Y’know, I was just reading about a bacon flavoured vodka. I wonder if there’s a market for chicken flavoured soju? But for every franchise, there was more than enough local content to balance things out. This looked good. Chamnamu dak nara, which Yoonhi agreed is close to “chicken the way you like it”. But this wasn’t our destination. We continued up the hill. Scud wasn’t keen on this introduction of gravity, but we pressed on. Up the hill, and with altitude the scale also climbed. Very upscale, with expensive restaurants and cafes and galleries, and churches galore. (I forget how Christian Korea is at times, an anomaly of sorts in Asia.) And there, finally (Scud was in the cold, grumbling stage) we found it, just when we thought we wouldn’t. Actually, the key factor here was that I’d opened my cell and had called FatMan. This is a guarantee that it must be close…..as in “right under my eyes”. So, what was my impression? Funky. If you ask me to describe this place, I’ll go Motown on you. Funky is the word. Consider the location. It’s nestled into a drop in the road like a tick into an armpit. You have to descend perilously to the entrance to get to the door, and it’s still precipitous once you get inside. I suggested to Scud that it was like Alice down the rabbit hole, but he just grunted. And the décor?......In contrast to the plush joints down the hill, this had the feel of moonshine, board shops, and altered states. Inside, well, like I said, funky. But maybe with some early Jefferson Airplane to go with it. Greens and blues, and the feeling that there should be a bong about here somewhere with a caterpillar. It’s not huge, by any means. They were full when we first arrived, and we had to wait a bit. “Full” means they have, like, twelve customers. There’re only five tables in all, and you’d be hard pressed to fit two people at some of them. No crowding, though, lots of space, they just don’t feel they need to get too “rushed”. If I was going to build a place myself, it would probably look like this. Okay, this is probably better leveled than what I would do….. Now, given that I’d already humiliated myself (“what sort of a guy asks for directions?”) FatMan showed up to join us, being in the area (in part, I believe, to taunt me for asking for directions ☺ ). This was a good thing, as Scud was still a little sullen over the hike. We needed some outside company to keep us civil. The first question was this! Coffee beer. How did they do this? It was good! The answer? Generic beer – Hite, I think, with a shot of espresso in it. This works really, really well. I’m sort of in shock that this isn’t already a craze in Vancouver and the Pac NorthWest, given the propensity for java and hops there. Ribs for the boy, artfully displayed, although I didn’t find anything striking in the flavour. Still, pork is pork, and that’s a good thing. What I’d come for was this. A cheese melt of baked pumpkin stuffed with ddeok, green chilis, and some other stuff under there. For a cold Seoul evening, this is comfort food, right up there with budaechiggae and nachos. The chilis and cheese combination is one of those things that just works well. Background that with the stringy, rich texture of pumpkin, and you have a winner. While most people will, I know, have references in TexMex, for me, biting into it, I was thinking of hema dase, and nights in Bhutan. I see why Fatman likes this place. It has the feel of a couple of surf bums that have washed up somewhere and thrown together something they’d like to do. Plus, while the menu is limited, they’re looking to working the Korean dishes up to something more than what Jason describes as “ghetto food”. I like ghetto food, but it can also form a static boundary, and a lot of the people I’d been talking with had been coming up against that more and more often. I’ll come back to that in the closing parts of this thread. I wish I’d had more appetite, but then I wouldn’t have had as much fun earlier. No, I enjoyed what we had here (particularly the coffee beer). I like the attitude of the guys here, and if I was living in this part of Seoul, I see how it’d be easy to be a regular here. edited - I have to come up with more synonyms for "here", obviously Meanwhile, of course, we’d been talking about everything under the sun Korean, particularly movies and foodstuff. That sort of talk calls for a drink. Next: A Drink

I generally take notes of what and where I eat (Prasantrin/Rona will vouch for this). However, I don't post everything I eat (unless it's a jaunt, like what's going on now). I find that by paying attention to what I eat, and regurgitating it (so to say) in print, I can nail it down in my memories with better precision, and from there I can enjoy future meals more from the comparisons I carry rattling around in my head. But that's just the way my brain works (or maybe I watched A Clockwork Orange too many times as a youth?)

I hope that was a good thing.

March 23 – Something About Mary Scud had had the benefit of napping in the restaurant, and Jason had an equivalent edge from not having had as much soju as I did, so I woke up to find the both of them perched on the edge of the bed watching baseball in the early afternoon. Scud had his jar of sugar to get him going. With the game out of the way, I decided this was a day when we should do things of interest to Scud. Things that didn’t involve watching the sun come up. The boy needed to get North of the river for some culture. So I packed him out of the house, onto the underground, and across the Han to Anduk station. We were going to Insadong – “known to foreigners as Mary’s Alley”. Serena had enjoyed Insadong a lot, and I was pretty certain that Scud would, too. Traveling with kids (of any age) can be challenging, and it's good to have a few cards up your sleeve. I know Insadong is ground zero for what passes for tourism in this town, but I have a soft spot for the place. Back in the early 90’s, when everything was going the way of poured concrete and cinder block, Insadong was the one part of town where you could get a sense of the old architecture, and find a lot of the traditional crafts that were being pushed aside in the last drive towards modernization. It had been a centre for the antique trade since the Japanese Occupation, and has held onto that purpose since then. It was Insadong where I had my first pufferfish (and we had no idea what we were eating at the time). It was Insadong where I started loading up on brushes, ink, and good paper. Insadong is where I found the great summer salad idea of using the dressing as a granite, in the quiet courtyard of Biwan. The teahouse – Feel Like Throwing The Flowers – showed me how you could turn a basement into a two story restaurant. And book stores. Lots of book stores. Yes, there’re scandals concerning the knock-offs and the fakes (check out the Joong An Daily for more details), but I still like stopping by. But does anyone know where the name “Mary’s Alley” came from? My old 1990 Lonely Planet referred to Insadong by that name, and you still find the reference here and there, but outside of the standard “US soldiers started calling it Mary’s Alley” there’s no reason I can find for the name. Is there a St. Mary's church nearby? Yoonhi says that, from when she was a kid (and dinosaurs roamed the Earth) that "Mary" was the generic name for American pets (dogs in particular). But that's a bit out there. Anyways, Insadong or Mary's Alley, it’s also a good spot to find food (as if that’s ever a problem in this town). At the top of the hill, at the main intersection, a lady was selling traditional sweets. These are the hard white ones you can use as a hockey puck if you need to, some plain shards, and others filled with nuts and sold in a roll. Beside her, enjoying the warmth, a fellow sells roasted chestnuts. The main drag is good for street sales, but the side alleys are where the restaurants and some of the better antique dwellers are hiding. A lot of the places down here are doing set tables – hanjeongsik – lots of pretty dishes set out in a proper meal. Decisions, decisions. Finally, I chose this place. Attractive, quite upscale, with a certain funkiness about it. But do they have to have a television running in every Korean restaurant? Where there’s chon, there’s makkeoli, and I was in a dongdongju mood. Scud had his glass of coke, and I had my bowl. This one was a ginseng dongdongju so I was obviously doing good things for my health. (And you could definitely taste the ginseng in this). There was acorn jelly with a tangy sauce, and marinated beef. Scud ordered the pork fried up with chili and soybean. Gochu chaeyu bokkum. This had one of those pleasant burns that sneaks up on you.. For me, it was chon. Kim chi chon. This is one of those perfect matches – the oil, the crunch of the fired vegetables, the batter, and then the enveloping happiness of the dongdongju embracing everything. We lingered a bit, Scud exercising his prerogative of adolescent indolence. I enjoying my refreshing beverage. But it was already going on mid-afternoon, and our day would soon be over. We headed back to the street. As I’d said, the street is also a good place for food. Do you need a bag of popped stuff? Straight from the bang to you? And I did look about at some of the pottery. The Koreans make some beautiful ceramics, and a good portion of our serving ware has been built up over our trips here. This time, I was of the mind to get a sake flask for traveling. It’s one of those things a gentleman traveler should just have in his kit. Of course, we had to go to Toto. What boy wouldn’t be thrilled with that jammed mass of McDonald Happy Meal toys, action figures, and vintage soft drink bottles? Anyone recognize these? Lotte and Hette. There’re bottles of Sunny on the top, and Oran-C down below (and Coke and Fanta, but those are easy). If you’re traveling with kids, this is a place where they’ll find something they can identify with. And, of course, what boy won’t want to spend hours drooling over sharp pointy things? And, yes, along with the walls of pikes, katana, broadswords, daggers, other fun stuff, there are also examples of kitchenware to look over. At least, I could look over. Scud was back with the longswords. (As a useful note, if you need oiling sets and oil for carbon steel blades Back on the street, there were a number of familiar sights. The Dragon’s Beard guys were still there, running their patter, showing the folding process of working up from one piece to 16,384 strands, which are finished with honey, nuts, and sesame. It’s always fun to watch them do this, in a mesmerizing sort of manner. And the sales people for this always have such a great routine down. They know the pitch, and they enjoy delivering it. (And, yes, I did buy another box. They’re good.) There was a stall a few meters away with interesting looking stuff. They had things of batter lathered with bean paste that I don’t recognize. Is it just another shape of hoddeok? And there are those evil yam fries. You think you’re getting shoestring potatoes, and what you end up with are slivers of yam so hard you could use them as nails. And there were bungeo. There was no way we were missing out on goldfish, so Scud and I ordered one each. We were getting rather full by now. A pity, as I would’ve been interested in seeing if the “spawn potage” was a tribute to Todd McFarlane. I can only imagine what they’d put in it. And, besides the traditional, there was plenty of the modern. Coffee, hot chocolate….but can you legitimately call something yogurt ice cream? (yogeotu aisu kkurim). And here was the chance to stock up on yeot (the traditional candy) at wholesale prices. And the hoddeok ladies are still there. And they still had a line up. Scud and I had some. Scud just treated his with a bit more caution this time. The sweets window had a stunning display of ddeok. Gureumddeok on the left top – “Black cloud”? – with a mix of beans in the modeum kkongchal ddeok below; cranberry seolgi (with the hearts); and heukimja mali ddeok and beji mali ddeok (“mali” is “roll”). And chapssal ddeok, with macadamia flavour. If you like mochi, this is the store to be at. Traditional and not so traditional soft rice cakes. And next door you can get your honey sweet potato fix satisfied. And what’s street food without some sausages? And stuff on sticks. Either meats on the grill, or odeang in the sauce. And I could smell the bundaeggi (silk worm larvae) from a distance. Nothing I did or said was going to convince Scud to try this (and I’d already done my one attempt last trip – it wasn’t going to happen again). The things on the lollipop sticks are candy. These are like the ones that Yoonhi and Serena had on Myeongdong last time, the goal being to use a safety pin to tap out the shape in the middle without breaking anything. And this stand had stuffed squid – ojingeo sundae. I was really feeling sad at this point about not being able to eat more, but the fried stuff from earlier was filling me up. Finally, we came out at the bottom of the street at Tapgol (Pagoda) Park. This park (the first modern one in Seoul) was where the Korean declaration of independence was first read out in 1919. And, on that historical note, Scud and I had to think about dinner. Luckily, we were thinking with our heads, because our stomachs were telling us to stop already.

March 23 – That Missing Hour (The live action version is )I’d stepped out, for what was to be just a brief reconnoiter. However, with a camera in either hand (the video and the still), and several bottles of soju under the belt, this wasn’t likely to be brief. I pushed back behind the direct sales, and worked my way onto the packing floor. Like Tsukiji, there were small hills of Styrofoam about, and more coming in, as fast as the forklifts and musclepower could manage. There were also stacks of empty orange-coloured plastic crates. These were in the process of being kicked, tossed, and carted about like extras in a Texas Chain Saw flick. A few seconds later, and things started making sense. The orange crates were being laid out in orderly rows, and water was being poured into them. But the more I looked, the more I found. But everything seemed awfully quiet, and, well….relaxed. It was also quite friendly. One fellow pointed at his watch, and I gathered from his gestures that I needed to wait another fifteen minutes. He bought me a cup of coffee, while he had some tea and a hardboiled egg. After an exchange of smiles, he returned to talking with the ajima who was running the coffee trolley. Nearby some guys were trading jokes and cigarettes, and the place had a nice, village-like atmosphere. Korean coffee. Powdered and already mixed in with sugar. You can’t get away from the sugar. Mind you, in my current state (surprisingly lucid, too, I might add) the heat of the coffee and the accompanying sugar rush was quite welcome. I contemplated one of the little bottles, knowing they’d be some concoction of caffeine, caffeine, and probably some more caffeine, but figured I’d leave myself in the capable hands of my metabolism. I must’ve slipped into one of those happy moments of stupor, as when I looked around, my new friend was tugging at my sleeve and pointing me in a direction back the way I’d come. Those ranks of orange coloured crates were now being filled out with fish. They were tossed in, and, as they hit, suddenly came thrashing back to life, matrix-like. From a fairly haphazard assemblage, the fish were moved about, evening out each lot. Then someone would hoist the crate up onto a vintage scale, and someone else would note the details of the lot number and weight down on a scrap of paper. An auctioneer’s podium wheeled by on the back of a small truck-like thing, reminding me of a portable guillotine. And around then, someone started singing to the fish. At least that’s what it sounded like. An odd, ululating cry that rang out over the floor. It drew me across the hall over to where the podium had set up. Folks were walking about the fish boxes and taking notes. Meanwhile a group of buyers in the back were standing up on a ledge with a vantage over the wares. You know they’re buyers, as they’ve all got baseball caps with numbers attached. They’re either buyers, or else they’re all playing some odd game I know nothing about. Up on the podium, Mr. Auctioneer ends his call, his buddy on the laptop beside him gives a bow, and then the pace changes. I’ve had Yoonhi listening to the fellow on the video segment. She has no idea what he’s saying. It’s like making sense out of one of those guys selling cattle. But hands were waving, sales were being made, and the big board was rolling through the numbers. It was a fun thing to sit through. Livelier than the tuna auction at Tsukiji. People would smile and bow to me, and nobody seemed to mind the tourist with the camera. Maybe it's just that there are way too many tourists at the Tokyo fish market. There certainly weren't any guided groups here. This guy could keep up a patter. When the auctioneer finally took a breath after a few minutes, the lots were sold, and they were getting ready to move the podium to the next location. It wasn’t just fish going up on the block. There were palates of really impressive looking octopi out on the floor. These weren’t things Scud would be trying to fit into his mouth in one go. One of the many good things about an octopus is that you can pretty much pack it into any shape you want. You can lay it out neatly for maximum display; you can form fit it to a Styrofoam box; or you can just jam it in. Crab, however, take a little more effort, but they still looked extremely tidy for something with that many legs. And meanwhile, there was more fish. There’s always more fish. All that blood on the floor made me hungry I couldn’t have been gone from the restaurant for very long, could I?

Hi, Rhonda We came across gaebul on the East Coast last trip.. Sheena coined their name, so I can't take credit for that. These things are usually tossed in at the front of most seafood meals. You don't order them, really, they just show up, as was the case when we had this order a couple of years back. They're the ones on the right hand side of the tray. Circumcised...errrrr...skinned, they're an odd purple in colour, and, like the octopus legs, they're usually still squirming when you eat them. (The orangey stuff to the left of the shot is mongae "sea squirt") I can't say the flavour of them does much for me, but to each their own.

Hi, Hiroyuki! The sauce is something associated more with Japanese tempura. In Korea, tempura is eaten as is (that's according to Yoonhi). Modern Korea seems to like adding it to ddeokbokki, but that's not something that went over well when we did it. As for the sashimi ("hwae"), traditionally it would be eaten with chojang (vinegar and gochujang - the red chili bean paste). But here they immediately put out some wasabi (maybe because of me?). The ketsup bottles in the background are probably chojang. The Koreans normally don't have a selection of small pieces, but rather go for one fish that's been fileted, cut into thinner slices, and then laid out. Maybe for this reason smaller fish are more in demand. This goes to the "fresh" thing, which is why the markets here do well with day trade as well as the commercial buyers. The Koreans want a fish taken flapping from a tank. Outside of Korea, I've had some wonderful grouper this way, with the meat taken off of the fish while it's still allive. Gruesome, but definitely fresh. Anyways, I better get around to that missing hour.

It sounds like a lot, but......okay, it's a lot. But remember, soju's not really that strong, only around 19 or 20%, and the bottles are small. Of course, makkeoli is even lower in alcohol, but the headaches from that can be wicked. More on wicked headaches soon.

March 23 – Mountain Octopus Our purchases settled, the young lady bundled our stuff up in one very animated sack, and walked down the strip a few meters to the nearest hole in the wall. Chungnam Restaurant definitely fit the bill. It was jammed into the side, down a short alley fronted by a massive display of red spicy sauce. It’s gotta be red. After the sauce, you hit an odeng stand (when don’t you?) and across from that is some good looking fresh tempura. This is my idea of what a good restaurant should be like. Ondul (heated floor for sitting) on one side, and tables and chairs on the other. A tastefully modern brushed hutch for the chinaware, and the mod con of a very large fridge for the soju. The whole place is nestled under the railway tracks, so every now and then (while the trains are running) you get that satisfying rumble of giants overhead that reminds you of what it’s like to be a worm. The dinner settings are wrapped in saranwrap, and they’re chomping at the bit to get on with the feeding frenzy that’s going to break out any time real soon. (to be fair, there were a few other tables occupied, back on the other side of the tracks. I think we were the only people not wearing rubber boots.) The standard set came out. Garlic, chilis, lettuce, and gaenip. Some fresh wasabi (geja) smeared into a small dish…..and soju. And for condiment, along with the ubiquitous bottles of red, some green stuff and sesame into a chunky splurt of red sauce. I’d actually been dallying outside shooting, so some of the stuff came out in lightning speed. If you ask me what luxury is (and there’s probably an eGullet list to this effect around somewhere) I’ll have a list. That list will include: - good caviar - foie gras - champagne - salmon roe - raw meat of good quality - truffles (black, white, or Arabian) - Pacific salmon cheeks - Good chocolate - Abalone, fresh and raw (Yoonhi says "just listen to Diana Krall’s Peel Me A Grape"…okay, maybe that’s more “decadence”.) Give me the opportunity to eat fresh abalone, still squirming from the cut, and I’m a happy man. (note: my list changes all the time. Ask me next week) Add in some cold soju and I’m off and gone. Our fish arrived. The flatfish (I told him things would get worse last entry) and a big chunk of sashimi grade salmon we’d scored for 20 kilowon in the market. An aside: a topic of conversation arose. It seems, if you really want to load up on salmon (as any of the many resident Vancouverites always want to do in Seoul), you’re best bet are the wedding halls. These commercial ventures generally run buffets of good quality for prices that are reasonable (but not cheap). If you’re really cheap, just crash one of the weddings being held in the halls ala The Wedding Crashers. I might try it if I looked more like Owen Wilson…..but I don’t. They’d also thrown in a half dozen of those dubious oysters. Really, oysters should be sold alive, not shucked and in saran wrap. Still, Korea isn’t a place where I worry about food poisoning. The Koreans get kind of irate with people that don’t practice proper food handling. Think angry mobs with pitchforks and torches. In short, we ate the oysters. They’re not Fanny Bays or kumamotos, but they were okay. A little flaccid, but okay. And then the main attraction! Mountain octopus. Well, actually, it’s fresh octopus, but “san” can be read both ways. I’m just not going to let Yoonhi forget it (I live for these small victories, however pointless). Live. Live to the point of wriggling. Live to the point where Scud was eating one, and the tentacle was curling about outside of his lips, looking for purchase to get away. Live to the point where Jason was in glee as to the way they pull themselves up onto the chopsticks. There’s no way I can really do justice to the look of the dish (or the one that’s still to come – there’s a teaser for you), so that’s my main reason for taking a break and working out how to fit HD onto YouTube. You can go There, video may have killed the radio star, but I’m now free to talk about the taste. With san nakji, it’s the taste and the sensation, neither of which should take second place. On the taste side, this is obviously almost as fresh as you can get (really fresh would be just downing the whole thing. Scud tried to do the head, but gave up before his gag reflexes kicked in…..still, it was neat when the ink sack burst). The meat is tender, and with every bite there’s that squirt of the sea to be had. The suckers give a final resistance after the rubbery yield of the main flesh of the tentacles. For the experience – you feel this all over the inside of your mouth. The suckers are grabbing onto your mouth, and, if you let them, there’s that interaction with the sensitive nerves on your lips as the tips struggle to escape. Add in the before-mentioned “squirt” of salt water, and it’s hard not to enjoy this. At least for me. The first crab showed up, the hairy one, and we savaged it fairly quickly. White, flaky flesh. Sweet, like good crab should be. The carapace was soft enough that we could break it apart with our fingers. Scud was getting some attention from outside the window. Before I could stop Stupid Boy, he’d opened the window and offered that cat a piece of fish. Luckily, he did it with steel chopsticks, as he would’ve probably lost his hand otherwise. That cat was fast. A lesson our kids obviously haven’t learned….don’t assume that cute animals are going to behave that way. Korea doesn’t have the rabies problems you get in the Middle East, but those wounds may not heal the same way. At least he got new chopsticks. Our ranks were swelling as the clock ticked on. We’d started with four, but Jason had been working the phones, and we were now up to about seven. It gets kind of blurry. There was a brief break in the eating, and I strolled outside to shoot more video of the food. When I got back, they’d taken away the crab we hadn’t finished – the lungs, the brains, and the odd bits of meat, and mixed it up and packed it back into the shells. That’s always a fun part in Asian restaurants. The Koreans do this a lot, but I’ve also had the same in Japanese, Chinese, and Thai places, where you eat to a certain point, and then the food will be taken and transform it to something new. Of course, at this time I’m on the my 10th bottle of soju, so I made the mistake of letting Scud have the first bite. You’d think I never feed that boy. The next dish was my favourite of the night. More san nakji, but this time it had been hit with sesame oil and a topping of roasted sesame seeds. Not only did it taste excellent (I like sesame), but the oil made it even harder for the octopus to grab onto anything, and the result was something akin to the death scenes of the Kraken. This one you really have to see on the video. We asked them for some tempura (the munchies are a horrible thing) and they popped back out into the alley and came back with some large prawns draining out onto paper towels. Hot from the oil, and crisp. At around 3 a.m. I’d wandered out onto the killing floor to see the fish auction. It didn’t feel like long, but when I came back an hour. The other crab, the hard one, had come and gone, and I missed getting a shot. Still, we had a good crowd, and they needed to eat, too. Our guardian ajima had taken the leftover abalone, and brought it back as congee “juk”. Thick, full of fat, and as good as any risotto (well, okay, maybe Giusto’s with that slab of foie gras and truffles might be better….). This shot is for all of you juk fans out there. Just don’t expect me to go to a juk restaurant. I have my limits. By 4 something it was “Scallops? When did we buy scallops?” Still, they were steaming, and they were there. We ate them, and had some more soju. It wasn’t dawn, but the trains were starting to run again. We woke Scud up (and some others), thanked our waitresses, and shambled out into the cold. Not a bad night. It was going to be a pretty rough morning, but not a bad night. Next – The Missing Hour [Note: for the video work, Yoonhi was correct, as always, and I did back out a lot of the identifying material. It's fairly public, so it's best not to get too graphic. Scud with tentacles coming out of his mouth may come back to haunt him in the future.]

I'm with Doddie. In fact, the markets are the easiest place to get fed if you can't read Korean. Point at the critter, and it's yours. And once you get to the restaurant, if you just smile and bob your head, one of the aunties will happily take charge of your appetite. Mind you, if you can recognize some Korean food names, I do recommend learning to read Korean. It's one of the easiest written scripts to pick up. (As an alphabet, it's more approachable to us Westerners. Everyone say thanks to King Sejong). This means that, with a little struggle, you can mouth out names you'll recognize, and then you can point them out to the waitstaff. Just remember to smile and bow.

March 23 (barely) - West Side Story When I left Korea last time, I bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t fit in a return trip to Garaksijang, the big market on the East side of town. I’d enjoyed our afternoon there, and the subsequent feeding, but it had left me wanting more. In particular, I was enchanted by the idea of a late night soju and seafood fest in the middle of the action (I’ll give both equal billing). The meal we’d had last time was excellent, but it was one of those instances where you buy your food, and then exit the market to a separate building with the restaurants somewhat removed from the sturm und drang. So, when setting up what passes for a plan, I’d made certain we could get a few people together for a late night feed. In Korea, there are always people available for food and drink. But our plans veered 180 degrees. Jason felt that it might be worth hitting up Noryangjin on the West side of town, out towards Incheon and the airport. “There’s another market?” said I. (You have to imagine my eyes going big at this). Little did I know, at the time, that Noryangjin has become the standard tour stop for visiting celebrity chefs. Okay, that list consists of Andrew Zimmern and Tony Bourdain, but it’s still pretty good company. Looking up Noryangjin on YouTube last week (as I tried to figure out how to post the squirmy bits of this trip), I finally found out what all the fuss was about. Good episodes, and both hosts did an excellent job of portraying the Korean passion for food. Bourdain had a lot more alcohol and cigarettes in his. But, that’s recent news. Back in March, I was just ecstatic to find out there was more to be had. And so, just around midnight, after a rather muddled attempt to get Danny’s jacket back to him (“What apartment was he in?”), four of us piled into a taxi and headed towards Incheon. We alit at the train station. It blockades the entrance to the market, and you climb up a staircase and through a hallway that looks like a set out of a Japanese horror film. No other people, and hard, industrial concrete and steel everywhere. In talking of the East we often spend a lot of time describing the zen aspects of rock gardens and such, but when you really come to grips with a lot of modern Asia, it’s fairly grim concrete. And rebar. Lots of rebar. Mind you, so is a lot of the world. I guess you have to visit countries that are too poor to afford concrete to get away from this. Coming through the overhead, your first impression of the market is a drop. A drop onto a wet, grey floor. Alluring in its own way, but hardly pretty. The seafood, however, has me entranced. Your second impression is the quiet. A cold, grey quiet. The sort of quiet that has every second shop shrouded in blue tarp material, like a crime scene obscured from view. It’s around midnight, and we’re in one of those interstitial moments. The day shoppers are long gone. The mom and pop buyers who are stocking up for a party, the couples out for a fresh dinner. The restauranteur crowd won’t be here until the morning (Koreans do like to sleep), and the hardcore professionals will be doing their buying around 3ish, when the boats come in. We just need to get into the right mindset to join the pros. That’s what soju is for. In terms of size, the place is big, but not Tsukiji big. However, I find that somewhat offset by the approachability of everyone. Take what I said a second ago about the celebrity chef thing, and put that into context. Two chefs. This is not a place where you find groups of foreigners getting in the way. This is still a place where the vendors are (sometimes) happy to see an odd looking face showing up. I say “sometimes” in brackets, because it’s late, and its really, really cold. Breathe hanging in the air cold. Biscuit-tins-burning-charcoal cold. It’s cold. But, we were dressed warmly enough, and, the good thing about being wastrels, we could take our time about choosing our prey. Ambling from station to station, we were looking for large crabs and odd things in tanks. And octopii, we were definitely looking for octopii. There were enough of them, playful little things squirming about, and trying to find someplace to hide. Consider their panic. I’ve seen an octopus the size of my head disappear into a paper-thin crack in the Gulf of Aqaba. Here they’re trapped in a world of glass smooth walls. Not a crack or fissure to be found. Shellfish were out in all their glory, but we didn’t want to overindulge in that area just yet. They’re good, but there will be other opportunities. Abalone, however…..well, that’s another matter. The sea cucumbers looked appropriately gnarly, but we had to thing about how they’d be prepped. Typically, the Koreans eat them raw, with a safety pin. We passed on these just now, but check back on the Beijing thread when I get to it in a few weeks. However, in the background, there was gaebul. Yes, prior eGulleters have already commented upon the resemblance. (Sheena, this shot’s for you.) The oysters were a bit of a challenge. I’m still confused about this. The market here was all about “fresh”. Breathing, flapping, squirming fresh. But the oysters were sold pre-shucked, either on the shell, or in a mass of something that looked like it came out of a brobdingnagian sinus cavity. Why? The abalone looked good, and we gave in and ordered some of these. Mind you, the mongae – those bright orange monster-club looking things – looked good, too, but I must admit, like gaebul, the flavour doesn’t do much for me. The crabs looked nice, though. But these were too small. We were scoping out the crabs, looking for some that had the right “attitude”. Basically, something about the size and look of the Predator. This one looked like he’d take on Arnold. Meanwhile, squid pulsed serenely about in their tank, oblivious to the clamour about them. There’s a calm to squid and cuttlefish that always puts me at ease. After talking with FatManSeoul (FMS), I was intrigured by the skate. Citrus fruit made sense. The lemon, like urinal tablets, was there to cut the ammonia smell from the fish, we excrete through their skin. I wonder what the reaction would be if you just put urinal cakes in the tank? Remind me to talk more on this later, when I catch back up with FMS. (I asked Yoonhi about the “eo” on the tank. This is just the Chinese reading for “fish”). But, we were getting hungry, and this constant peering into tanks of good looking food was driving us to distraction. We picked out two of the crabs. One a hardened think of carapace and sharp bits, the other a hairy crab, with a softer shell. Doing a gymnast proud, they danced about on the scales. We’d gone with two medium sized crabs rather than the one monster. And the fish looked good. After having watched a number of these flopping about as they were chosen for the night’s feed, we figured we should do one too. I almost felt sorry for the fish. After it had flapped about, it lay there gasping. It almost had that look of “darned I’m tired. Things can’t get worse than this, can they?” The answer, of course, is they can get a lot worse. Feast – (with apologies to John Gulager) You can find the YouTube version of this part of the write-up Note: it was posted in HD, but I find the feed is slow, but that may just be my connection over here. Good luck.

I'd be interested in hearing how the Ubiquitous Chip is faring. I had a very good meal there back in 2000. Moreover, the collection cookbook Glasgow On A Plate indicated that a large part of the kitchen crowd from that time had a spell at the UB Chip in their resume.

Cool! In Providence, too! Definitely buy some turmeric. Just get used to the idea that you're going to have yellow fingernails for the next few weeks. For some reason, he body just seems to force it out through my cuticles. Will they let you take pictures in the store?

Some of the more "over the top dining" is attributable to the expatriate crowd. I think the expatriates that you find lurking about here on eGullet and the other sites are a more nomadic group than the "home to the house every year" crowd that also exists abroad. (Nothing against them, that's their priority.) This group - as Prasantrin (Rona) has mentioned - isn't as concerned with their 401K's and mortgages as are people permanently residing somewhere. I wouldn't quite say it's "life for the moment", but...... The food people I've met overseas (and whose company I enjoy very much) have all decided that they're going to squeeze every drop they can from their time on far shores. And the price is going to be a secondary issue (as much as it can be - everyone does have limits). Living now on a slightly better shoe-string (stop choking, Rona!) for myself I just look at my travel and dining binges as a balance to my work. I don't spend money on football tickets, hockey, cable television, or expensive hobbies (okay, there is the movie business thing). And when I don't travel, I play here in my kitchen, trying out the things I've seen elsewhere. I'm happy, the family's happy. There, that seems reasonably incoherent.

A quick note...... The Dusit Thani in Bangkok is doing a Printemps Gourmand A Celebration of French Cuisine and the Arts Jacques Pourcel is coming in from Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier, and will be working with the chefs of the Dusit, and with Sebastien Bonnefoi (founder and director of Urban Bar Bartending School, Shanghai) in putting on a four day celebration of Spring in Bangkok. If you're interested, it looks fun: Thursday 21 May 9.30 - 2 pm Cooking class by Chef Jacques Pourcel followed by lunch at D’Sens at THB 1600 net 12 - 2 pm 4-Course Gourmet Luncheon at D’Sens by Chef Jacques Pourcel at THB 990 net 6 - 8 pm Happy Hour, with 2-for-1 on classic and creative cocktails mixed by Sébastien Bonnefoi and Surasak Pantaisong at D’Sens Bar. Tapas by Chef Jacques Pourcel. Live jazz music 6 - 10 pm 6-Course Gourmet Dinner at D’Sens at THB 2,000 net Friday 22 May 9.30 - 11.30 am Cooking Demonstration by Chef Jacques Pourcel at Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Culinary School 12 - 2 pm 4-Course Gourmet Luncheon at D’Sens at THB 990 net 5 - 6 pm Cocktail Demonstration with Sébastien Bonnefoi and Surasak Pantaisong at MyBar 6 - 8 pm D’Sens Bar Happy Hour; cocktails by Sébastien Bonnefoi and Surasak Pantaisong 6 - 10 pm Gourmet Dinner at D’Sens featuring Chef Jacques Pourcel’s Mediterranean Specialty Menu at THB 1,800 net 10 - 2 am French Kiss Party at MyBar featuring an exciting bartender show and DJ Greco providing funky grooves. THB 450 cover charge, Ladies Complimentary. Saturday 23 May 10 - 12 pm Cooking Demonstration by Executive Master Chef Fabrice Danniel at Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Culinary School 12 - 2 pm 4-Course Gourmet Luncheon at D’Sens by Chef Jacques Pourcel at THB 1,200 net 3 - 4 pm Macaroon Demonstration by Executive Master Chef Fabrice Danniel at Dusit Gourmet 3.30 - Afternoon High Tea at the Lobby Lounge, 5.30 pm featuring French pastries by Executive Master Chef Fabrice Danniel and teas from Ronnefeldt, at THB 350 net 7 pm Festival Gala Dinner at D’Sens. All participating chefs express their talents to create an unforgettable 6-course dinner at THB 4,000 net Sunday 24 May 12 - 2 pm Sunday Lunch at D’Sens featuring menu by Chef Jacques Pourcel at THB 1,200 net 3 - 4 pm Macaroon Demonstration by Executive Master Chef Fabrice at Dusit Gourmet 3.30 - Afternoon High Tea at the Lobby Lounge, 5.30 pm featuring French pastries by Executive Master Chef Fabrice and teas from Ronnefeldt at THB 350 net 5 - 7 pm Gourmet Cooking Demo by Chef Cédric Maton at Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Culinary School 6 - 10 pm 5-Course Gourmet Dinner at D’Sens by Chef Jacques at THB 1,800 net Why am I not in Bangkok right now?

Possibly, although I think the forums still provide a better interactive space in which to post. If you post as a blog, you lack the feedback (and corrections) that come back freely to you. Consider the forums as an effective form of fact checking, or of peer review. Heck, several of the senior members freely use the forum for gathering material for commercial purposes. I think that, as long as they stay open to a reasonably wide variety of input, the forums like eGullet will stay relevant. It's only when they try to constrain the material too tightly that they run the risk of failure (which only means that the bulk of the readers will go elsewhere. What's it cost to keep a site up?) I wouldn't say that they've "grown the market". That would imply a commercial element. I believe the blogs have opened up a unique form of expression for a lot of people, but it runs the risk of providing a stage for monologues, rather than dialogues. The trend towards geekiness in the forums is of their own doing. To distinguish themselves from the blogs, they grow more restrictive, and in so doing, drive more people to blogging, in response to which, they have to distinguish the forum from the blogs, and so become more restrictive..... When they do come aboard, I quite agree. But I'm observing most of the traffic going the otehr way, with more people spending less time in the forums, and more time on their own sites, cross referencing each other. That's not a bad thing, but it does lead to smaller networks (and to the fragmentation you talk about). The "partial content" item may or may not be driven from the food blogger side. Many of the forums (eGullet included) have extremely rigid rules on what can and cannot be discussed (food topics only, for example), so I can understand that some bloggers would post abridged versions of their material in order to comply with the restrictions of the forum, and then post the richer, more entertaining version in a linked site. This touches upon the relevance of the forums. The concept should be to engage people in discussions of issues, and to build a community, a confrerie (sorry if that sounds sexist). But, that being said, if there's no fun to be had, then, like a cockroach cadre exposed to the harsh fluorescent kitchen lighting, the audience will disperse. The problem then is one of devolution, a rigid, sophisticated skeletal structure of communications falling away to a mass of single-celled organisms (but I do like the cockroach simile better). Perhaps what we are seeing is the end of universality? Consider the "good old days" when a university education meant that you could learn "everything". Okay, that was a few hundred years ago......but maybe what we have been seeing of late is the evolution of a new system, without a centre? As you say, it's a truism. Blogging is monologuing, while a forum, if handled properly is either an active discussion, or a story-telling session with a rowdy audience. Both are worth the efforts that go into them. Blogging, to me, still seems like a voice in the wilderness. Some may catch and keep your attention, but they're rare beasts indeed. And, as for the lurkers.....it's a thing of joy when they are lured out in the forums. I don't think you'll ever accomplish that in blogs (stalkers, yes.....) Good topic, Jon "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold... " William Butler Yeats' The Second Coming, published in 1921.

Edible: Yoonhi's forcing me to go to Thailand against my will, and then my first meal in-Kingdom You can never go back after that. Inedible: Yoonhi's last gift to me of a magnetic induction tabletop unit, which has opened up a whole world of hot pots and stir fries for a boy who's challenged by electric grills.

It's a fair questions. I've been offered extra dishes on the basis of the kitchen having messed up. I don't really consider that a comp. They're just being good about making amends (and more often that not they don't do this) In other cases, I've arranged a meal across continents through conjoined restaurants, and they've been kind enough to have some bubbly waiting for me when I do show up, a month or two later. Then it's just the (unwarranted) anticipation of a guest. Is this a comp, or just kindness? A more important question, for many here....you frequent a restaurant because you appreciate what they do. Because you appreciate what they do, you strike up a friendship with them. A camaraderie develops, and, lo and behold, you have the simple human act of making friends. Does this mean you can no longer comment on what they are doing in the kitchen? Myself, I would hope not. I think that we must put some sense of community in perspective. For the true professionals, it's another matter. They're paid for what they do, and they're beholden to their masters. At work, depending upon the position I occupy, I don't socialize with those above or beneath me in the hierarchy. That's business. This isn't business, this should be fun. Honest fun. But fun.

Following up on the Star Chef dinner....... ZenKimchi has an excellent post on a visit to Star Chef's Kim HuNam's family farm. The farm is tucked in close by the DMZ, which is an interesting location. I've been up there a couple of times, and once you step over the river into the DMZ itself, it's almost like walking into a nature reserve. Fresh, clean, and untampered with (if you ignore the deadfalls and landmines). Meanwhile, I'm messing with HD settings in Youtube. We'll see if we can link in something more dynamic for the next posts. 10 more minutes to render

I'd consider a code of ethics more important as a public statement of common mores. By publishing, and holding open discussion, such a document acts as a reference point for the community. Put another way, while the vast majority of people will function to (what I consider) the decent norm of "do no harm", publishing a code of ethics gives everyone the chance to check to see if there's something they hadn't thought of, or been aware of, but see as common sense, and don't have an issue with implementation. Whether people want badges or affidavits or whatever is another matter.

You're forgetting that Manitoba has the third-largest French-speaking minority population in Canada. If you go to almost any restaurant business in the St. Boniface area of Winnipeg, you can get service in either French or English! Plus there are loads of French restaurants and bakeries (including my favourite bakery, Le Croissant) in St. B. ←

March 22 – Takin’ Care of Business Back home, we started prepping for the late evening. First, given that we could barely move, we needed to take out the trash. How the remains of the food process are handled says a lot about a place. We’ll avoid the biological element, and concentrate on the handling of packaging, though, shall we? I’ve seen everything from methodical sort and distribute rules, to very active composting, to just throwing the junk over your neighbor’s wall. In some countries you know you’re approaching a town by the piles of refuse dumped on the side of the road. In others it’s a guilty secret that’s taken out to sea and disposed of. While not as…shall we say “obsessive” as Canada, the Koreans do sort their rubbish carefully. Organic items, the remains of your food prep, are bagged and tagged. That is, you have official bags with ids that are purchased for garbage disposal (I’m just talking about apartment living on the South side of the river, so I can’t say if this is universal. But I do remember being yelled at by an old lady in the 90s for our putting a bag of garbage in “her” dumpster. We didn’t know then about the system). The urban rumour has it that the city can and will track down offenders that put recyclable items in these bags. But this doesn’t include the massive amounts of packaging that rack up. Boxes for fruit, pizza cartons, plastic and glass beer bottles and beer tins. There might have been some plastic beer bottles, too. These are collected in a separate room in the car park. A really, really full room. Now, any good spook will tell you its worth looking through the trash. What do we find? Garlic extract? Isn’t there enough garlic in the diet here? I love a mystery. (I know, I know, it’s probably good for your health……but we ourselves were eating about two bulbs apiece each day, and we’re tourists) It was interesting to root around (although the security guard who looked in was a bit confused). Almost all of the material was food packaging. Other places it would make up some of the bulk, but nowhere near the majority that we saw here. It’s all about the food. Next: West Into the Night

March 22 – The Left Bank After lunch it had been a hard day of shopping for studio gear at Yongsan. But that’s another story. On the road back across the river, Jason asked us if we’d want to check out the French sector. French sector? This was Banpo! I’ve stayed in Banpo before. Okay, it was over a decade ago…… This isn’t the Banpo I remember. I remember the standard apartment blocks and the little shop selling tuna fish kimbap on the corner. Maybe I just didn’t get out enough? Tidy little restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores. All of these clustered about the Lycee Francaise, the “raison d’etre” for this little cluster. Neatly arranged tables just off the sidewalks, just calling out for a coffee and a paper (although it was pretty chill out). Compare this to the French neighborhood in Vancouver around the Alliance Francaise. This is pretty impressive. (Okay, Western Canada is hardly a fair comparison for Francophone content). We focus so much on the North American ties Korea has that we run perilously close to hubris. Just as some Koreans are sending their next generation to North America, others are content to invest in a Parisian, Sydneyside, or Berliner experience (among others). And so we see a wider variety of dining coming to Seoul, a greater element of globalization. Is that a good thing or isn’t it? I do know it makes Seoul more attractive to me as a possible future home. It’s a nice little enclave, climbing up the hill like a vine. Stores with imported oils and vinegars. More restaurants – not just French, but Italian, American, and also Japanese. The words “sake bar” are like chum in the water. I wish I’d had more free time this evening to explore these places. This is a neighborhood I’d want to come back to one a warm spring evening. And with Gagniere coming to the Lotte Hotel recently, there’s a hint of a fresh spring in the air. Tastes are changing. But we couldn’t dawdle. We had something that needed to be done this evening. And it needed to be done deep in the dark of the night. Next: Before that, we take out the trash