Return to Korea

[Geekbabe]

Haha same here. I would need to learn how to say "poutine" in Korean and hope they can make me one.

Why? Trying new foods is one of the very best parts of travel! In most places you can get the spicy level dialed down if you need to & avoid things like squid etc if you wish.

Btw, Ponyo these pics are beautiful, love seeing you & your lovely wife, the countryside is gorgous & the food looks amazing ♥️ Thank you for sharing with us.

 

[sdifox]

Why? Trying new foods is one of the very best parts of travel! In most places you can get the spicy level dialed down if you need to & avoid things like squid etc if you wish.

Btw, Ponyo these pics are beautiful, love seeing you & your lovely wife, the countryside is gorgous & the food looks amazing ♥ Thank you for sharing with us.

His idea of travel is to come south to Toronto.

 

[Captante]

Cool pics thanks! Looks like a good time!


However..... "Enema button" ???

Based on the "colorful" description I'm thinking you've experienced this first-hand?

(would really suck to hit that button by mistake half-asleep in the middle of the night!)

 

[Geekbabe]

His idea of travel is to come south to Toronto.

If I could, my son and I would visit South Korea in a heartbeat. He has a deep love of Asian culture & would love teaching me some things. I would dive into so many hot pots! The food looks stunning!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Cool pics thanks! Looks like a good time!


However..... "Enema button" ???

Based on the "colorful" description I'm thinking you've experienced this first-hand?

(would really suck to hit that button by mistake half-asleep in the middle of the night!)

I would be too curious and have to try it. It can't be THAT bad if there's no warning on it right? I think that "stop" button needs to be one of those big red emergency mushroom buttons though.

 

[crashtech]

Having consumed a significant amount of Korean media, I have to interject that there are many beloved Korean foods that do not involve raw seafood. I believe Ponyo is showing us what he likes, which is really cool, but what is shown should not be taken as the totality of what is loved by Koreans generally.

 

[ponyo]

Why? Trying new foods is one of the very best parts of travel! In most places you can get the spicy level dialed down if you need to & avoid things like squid etc if you wish.

Btw, Ponyo these pics are beautiful, love seeing you & your lovely wife, the countryside is gorgous & the food looks amazing ♥ Thank you for sharing with us.

Thanks Geekbabe! It's my pleasure. I hope you and others have the chance to visit Korea and other parts of Asia in the near future.

Cool pics thanks! Looks like a good time!


However..... "Enema button" ???

Based on the "colorful" description I'm thinking you've experienced this first-hand?

(would really suck to hit that button by mistake half-asleep in the middle of the night!)

Of course I tried all the buttons. If you never try, you never know! When I saw the "Enema button" I was like what the heck? Let me press it and find out what it does. The evil person who designed it knew people would be curious and press it. Thank god for the stop button.

I would be too curious and have to try it. It can't be THAT bad if there's no warning on it right? I think that "stop" button needs to be one of those big red emergency mushroom buttons though.

Oh it's bad. Painful. But some people like pain. Who knows. You might like it.

Having consumed a significant amount of Korean media, I have to interject that there are many beloved Korean foods that do not involve raw seafood. I believe Ponyo is showing us what he likes, which is really cool, but what is shown should not be taken as the totality of what is loved by Koreans generally.

Absolutely. This is my story. Told from my perspective. Someone else who travels could have completely different experience because their interest and likes are completely different from mine. You can find pretty much anything in Korea. If you like eating McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, Shake Shack, Subway, and countless other American or Western franchise food you're familiar and comfortable with, it's all there.

 

[ponyo]

Back to Seoul.

We took the KTX bullet train from Busan back to Seoul and spent our remaining time in Korea in Seoul. We did lot of shopping and bought many Korea only items. I spent like $500 at Starbucks buying all the special edition coffee cups and mugs you can only find in Korea. We visited Costco in Seoul which was interesting experience because it's similar yet different from US Costco. We visited HomePlus which is Korean discount store similar to Walmart or Target. It was stores like HomePlus that kicked out Walmart out of Korea because Walmart couldn't compete in Korea. At HomePlus, they had live king crabs on sale for 159,000 or about $135 for around 2 kg crab. I purchased two king crabs and had the store steam and cook it for me.

Live king crab is something very hard to find in most parts of the world. But not in Korea. I can only get the frozen cooked legs in the US. And frozen cooked legs taste is inferior to fresh cooked king crab legs. The frozen legs are saltier and not as good. Plus there's no body with the frozen legs so you miss out on all the delicious crab tomalley. I mixed in some cooked white rice and crumbled roasted seaweed with the crab tomalley. It was glorious. So buttery rich and flavorful. Worth every penny or Won in this case.

 

[ponyo]

I want to wrap up this Korea trip blog with couple more food pics from Seoul. Every time I visit Seoul, I go to my favorite Korean BBQ restaurant. It's local restaurant located in residential area so I've never seen any foreign tourists in this restaurant. Only locals. So it's relatively cheap for Korean BBQ all things considered.

Hanwoo beef ribeye. One of the best tasting beef in the world IMO. Has nice beefy taste due to good mix of red meat to marbled fat ratio.

Mix plate of Hanwoo and USDA choice beef. The ribboned out beef short rib is USDA choice beef. You can see the inferior marbling of the US cow meat. Check out the great marbling of the thinly sliced Hanwoo beef brisket at the bottom. I've eaten and cooked crazy amount of US brisket. I've never seen brisket marbled like this. But this is par for Korean Hanwoo beef.

And I love beef short rib soup. I always eat many bowls of this soup when I'm in Korea.

And simple foods like beef bone broth knife cut noodles and dumplings at hole in the wall neighborhood noodle shop.

This simple food might not look like much but stuff like this is becoming harder to find and starting to disappear from local neighborhoods. This local noodle shop cooks and makes their beef bone stock from scratch. They make their noodles from scratch and cut the fresh noodles from dough using kitchen knife just like it has been done for hundreds of years. And they make the dumplings from scratch as well. And this humble bowl of fresh knife cut noodles is only 8,000 Won or about $6.75. That's cheap for something that's labor of love and so fulfilling.

And hole in the wall family dumpling shops are slowly disappearing as well. Covid really hurt mom & pop restaurants like this and rising ingredients and operating costs are killing these older businesses. And that's a shame. These types of mom & pop restaurants are what make Korea special for me.

I wrapped up my Korea trip with yet another Korean BBQ meal. This was massive and insanely busy restaurant. They used autonomous robot cart to carry and deliver food to tables. That was pretty neat to see.

The End.

 

[kage69]

Damn it, I'm going to be hallucinating about mandu, chimaek and Hanwoo beef for the rest of the day now.

I can't wait to visit Korea again, will def have Jeju on the agenda. Impressive trip ponyo, I'm envious. I like that you sought out the small mom and pop joints. I've been trying to do my part to help out small restaurants whenever I can, willing to do it in Korea too. Since covid I make it a point to tip like mafiaso too. When restaurants that know what they're doing close we all lose.

Want Korean BBQ so bad right now.

 

[Zeze]

Oh my god, i saw more pics.

This is just an eating tour. WOW and wouldn't have it any other way.;

 

[crashtech]

Absolutely. This is my story. Told from my perspective. Someone else who travels could have completely different experience because their interest and likes are completely different from mine. You can find pretty much anything in Korea. If you like eating McDonalds, Burger King, Subway, Shake Shack, Subway, and countless other American or Western franchise food you're familiar and comfortable with, it's all there.

Well, I really didn't mean fast food. Do you think chimaek is fast food? It probably can be but I also bet there are places that do it right. I understood that it's pretty popular there.

 

[ponyo]

Well, I really didn't mean fast food. Do you think chimaek is fast food? It probably can be but I also bet there are places that do it right. I understood that it's pretty popular there.

I would group fried chicken with fast food/ bar food. What do you consider KFC or Popeyes? Chimaek is just short hand expression for chicken and beer.

Korea is a country of fads. Chimaek was really popular about a decade ago but it's peak time passed. Crazy number of fried chicken places opened up only for most to go out of business. What remain are mostly franchise chicken delivery places now. You can still find bars serving fried chicken but it's not everywhere like before. Fried chicken is still extremely popular late night delivery food and that's where the franchises come in.