Side dishes. Bibimbap on the left, kimchi chigae on the bottom right and my dumpling rice cake soup. Super good!
Some really good tea we had in this tea house with a very cute train station theme.
Pumpkin Tea was really made from pumpkin and wasn't too sweet, just enough to bring out the pumpkin flavor. Rose Tea consisted of a large rose and little rose buds steamed in a glass tea pot. This was a very lightly flavored tea, very fragrant with a calming and relaxing effect on the drinker. Snow Dew Tea (I think that's what it's called..) - a type of green tea with a sweet after taste. It's weird, but it's for real and very good!
My dish was a sort of clam base soup with tofu, egg, and fish. Now this wouldn't be Korean cuisine without rice on the side!
Roomie's cold buckwheat noodles with seasoned hot pepper paste and veggies.
Mmm.. so this was the most interesting dish of the night. We've contemplated during most of the dinner as to what the thing on the spoon was. We were told it was fish reproductive organs, but that wasn't very reassuring - we still thought it was something else and I'm sure everyone who sees this pic knows which part of the body of I'm talking about! But aside from the supposed fish organ, veggies, string mushrooms, and real fish made up the rest of this stew, which didn't taste too bad!
Paris Baguette is a chain bakery around Korea with tasty pastries, cakes, cookies, sandwiches, and cakes!
These are some of the cakes and a little bear shaped bread they make. Very pretty and cute!
The first Sunday in Seoul, roomie and I are already taking the subway! When we got out of the Nowon Station there was a thousand won store (or dollar store!) and this stand for sandwiches..
1,000 won store and the lady making the egg part of the sandwich
Griling the bread with butter! I think the sandwich was pretty healthy even though the toast was smothered in butter - the egg had a little mixture of veggies in it and a little bit of ketchup for taste. Also, had a fifty cent cup of instant coffee - very yummy!
Our first Sunday in Korea and lucky enough to be able to attend a Thanksgiving dinner, as American as it could possibly be in Korea where they don't have turkeys! Thanks Christy for having friends here already and being the best roomie anyone could ask for for the week; thanks Jamie for inviting us; and thanks Madeline for having us :]
Our combined efforts in making homemade stuffing in a rice cooker came out very well! The buffet table's salads and rolls.
Yes! We had turkeys. I believe they came from an American base in Korea..? But there's also cranberry sauce, kyo chon chicken with radish, mashed potatoes, ham, and more stuffing. Super yummy and very full by the end of day!
After first day of training/orientation, roomie and I went out with the rest of the guys in our hotel for dinner.
I got the soondubu chigae (tofu stew) and roomie got hot buckwheat noodles - it was kind of bland, but healthy? The chigae was very good - you can't really go wrong with chigae.
All the guys were drinking soju and beer, so roomie thought we needed a drink too. Our waiter had spent some years in Cali which was great for us! He recommended makkeolli, which is like a milky beer without the alcohol.. ALMOST. Only almost because it's probably like .01% alcohol and it was a bit carbonated. It was definitely different and yummy!
After dinner we all went to walk around Dongdaemun, which is an area where a bunch of yellow and white tents are set up outside and it's like an open market. There are also malls with a bunch of different little stalls, like HK and China, as well as underground mall shopping! All of this starts around 10-10:30PM and goes 'til about 5AM. Me and roomie got the munchies while walking around so.. we snacked =P
I thought I got sausages on stick.. but it was they were actually made out of the same thing that fishballs are made of. Also, did not expect it to be super spicy, which it was! I realized it was most likely made from the seeds of the spicy green peppers they have around here. Yup, had one of those green peppers too! Roomie had chocolate ice cream - yumm! I killed it later trying to take out spice in my mouth =D
Walked around for a bit and the guys decided they were still a bit thirsty, so we found this "Western" bar. All the waiters were dressed in cowboy outfits, which I thought was a bit silly looking =P
That little black thingy next to the tissues is a bell that you press on when you want service. Waving down the waiters is not the norm in bars here.
The beers here are HUGE and if you get the Korean beers it's super cheap for one of those. Western beers are a bit pricier. Popcorn is the bar snack here, not peanuts or rice cracker mixes. Love it!
We wandered around our hotel for breakfast/lunch..
The lady had an English menu written in a random book lol she must get a lot of foreigners from our hotel. Smart lady. We ended up getting the mackerel casserole. The casserole was overall very filling and yummyful, but I don't know if I would order mackerel again - too many fish bones to pick out! I like to enjoy my food with as little effort as possible =]
BEFORE and AFTER
After a nice brunch, we walked around the market nearby - Chungbu Market.
Chungbu Market sign and the chili pepper stall. They crushed up pepper to make flakes or fine red pepper.
This was the garlic stall and seafood stall. The garlic was ALL peeled. Amazing. So far, I still haven't seen any unpeeled garlic. This stall had a very large variety of seafood, all of which is used in many dishes to either flavor or be used as the main part of a dish. MM.. seafood <3
Here was a huge tub of tofu. I think it's fresh and thought it was super cool, so it definitely needed to be photographed =P Then there were the stalls with all types of veggies. I think a majority of these veggies were roots or stems of plants we don't normally have in the States.
There were also all kinds of beans and I believe huge bags of snacks! hehe
This was the "Bast Shopping Bag" producer that was located right outside of the market. One other store sold huge things of ginseng. Probably super expensive, huh?
For the last two days, roomie and I had really good bibimbap from this place near our hotel. Very recommended! ..if only I knew what the restaurant was called =X
Side dishes + soup and bibimbap!
That's it for the food diaries from Seoul. Next up, Pohang!
