A Delicious Affair: Andong Steamed Chicken and Mackerel

After walking around Hahoe Village for 2 hours under the scorching sun, we carried our hungry bodies to a nearby restaurant. Andong is famous for spicy steamed chicken (Zzim Dak) and mackerel. The first bite of the chicken was extremely spicy so I was afraid I wouldn't be able to eat much. I think I ate the spicy part with pepper because it wasn't too spicy afterward.

DJ picking up clear noodle. I liked that the dish had lots of vegetables in addition to chicken.

The mackerel was seasoned and grilled perfectly! It tasted really good with kimchi.

A Delicious Affair: Hwang Woo Chon (Cow Town)

On our first night in Andong, Dad took the family to a Korean BBQ restaurant called Hwang Woo Chon. My parents come to this place whenever they crave beef because, according to Mom, they serve the most tender Andong galbi.

I was reluctant about coming here because...
1. I don't really like meat.
2. Korean beef is extremely overpriced.
We ordered galbi, which came in at 30,000 Won ($30) per 150 g (feeds about one person). The basic setting featured different banchan. I wasn't too hungry, but I was excited to see the meat grilling on the barbecue.

Waiting for the meat to cook...since I like my beef rare, my wait was slightly shorter.

Wow, the meat melted in my mouth! It was very tasty, tender, and juicy.

The meal was expensive (about $250), and I probably wouldn't want to come again since I rarely ever crave meat, but this is a great place for selective carnivores (but not for voracious carnivores because their wallets would empty out too quickly)

A Delicious Affair: Cong Ggot (Soy Bean Flower)

I didn't want to be at home all day so I went on an outing to Myoungdong, possibly one of my favorite neighborhood in Korea. Of course I walked there, which took me about 90 minutes because I took a detour and walked slower than usual (typically it would take me about an hour).

A couple weeks ago, I bought a deal from Ticketmonster, equivalent to Groupon, that sold soy bean noodle for 3,500 Won instead of its usual price of 8,000 Won. After searching for a bit, I found the restaurant tucked underground at a food court in Myoungdong.

I didn't even need to see the menu because I had already bought a bowl of Soy Bean Noodle, a noodle dish in soy bean broth that tastes a lot like curdier soy milk. I added a spoonful of salt to the broth to season it.

Rice and kimchi were self-service, so I had some of those too. The rice was seasoned perfectly so I had a whole bowl! I was too full to finish the noodle, which wasn't anything special. I packed it home and ate it for dinner, but it might have gone bad because my stomach was hurting a lot at night...Oh well.

A Delicious Affair: Golden Garden

My grandma and I had planned on going to a Korean BBQ restaurant called Golden Garden right after church on Sunday. Our plan, however, was delayed due to an unforeseen event. My grandma had locked the door from inside and accidentally left her key in the house. As a result, I had to take an hour round-trip to my aunt's house to fetch the key. Ugh.

Anyways, at the restaurant, I ordered the Oyster Rice in a hot pot. This was the basic banchan, or little dishes eaten with rice.

Hmm...I wonder what could be inside?

The big reveal. Look at all those oysters. Don't you love the steam?


The food was quite delicious, but I can't tell whether my taste bud was enhanced by my hunger. Next time I come, I will probably just order plain rice in a hot pot because the oyster added odd ocean-like scent to the rice that I didn't like.

A Delicious Affair: Squirrel Town Mook House

My grandma, Mom, and I took a taxi to a restaurant called "Squirrel Town Mook House" in Ilsan, a suburb of Seoul. Mook, or Korean gelatin, is a well-being, healthy traditional Korean food. The restaurant specializes in acorn mook, and we ordered the special course menu featuring samplings of many different entrees incorporating mook.

Both the interior and the exterior of the restaurant was homey and camp-like.
Squirrel Town is on the first floor, whereas the second floor of the wood cabin is an Italian restaurant.

We ordered the special course menu. It's the best deal at only $10 and we got to
sample all the different entrees made of mook.

Sweet pumpkin soup. I wish it was sweeter.

The first mook dish I tried. It's a buckwheat mook. I liked the salty seaweed on top because it added flavor to an otherwise flavorless mook.

Acorn mooksabal. Pieces of acorn mook was in cool broth with kimchi, ccumber, and carrots. Great summer food.

Sweet and sour mook. A twist from sweet and sour pork. I only had one piece since I'm not a big fan of fried stuff. The sauce was too sweet.

Smoked duck. Yup, you guessed it right. Didn't try.

Mook pancake. Another dish I didn't try because it was too greasy.

Mook noodle. It was too spicy.

Mook bibimbop. This was probably my favorite dish. It's a traditional Korean entree with rice and many different vegetables. Too bad I was full by this came out and couldn't eat it much.

Mook sujaebee. According to Mom, sujaebee (traditionally made of pieces of flour) was a cheap dish for the poor in the past. I liked the stew, but not the mook pieces themselves because it lacked flavors.

Mook bread for dessert.

After our full course meal, I was satiated but felt healthy as well. One word of caution is that mook, being as healthy as it is, can be flavorless. I would recommend this restaurant, and mook in general, because it's atypical and unlike other dishes you eat at home.

A Delicious Affair: Tiger Toppoki

I hate going to the doctor's office for multiple reasons, but by far the most frustrating is the endless wait. Today, I had a doctor's appointment at noon, and guess when they called my name? 1:20! Absolutely ridiculous. What made it even more unbelievable was that it was an extremely speedy check-up; the whole thing literally took less than 2 minutes. Wow.

Mom and I were quite angry afterward, but we soothed our frustrating and our hungry stomachs with a trip to Tiger Toppoki, a Korean fast food restaurant a few blocks away from the doctor's office.

We decided to sample all the main items on the menu. This is every Korean child's dream. Yum :)

Toppoki is a spicy rice cake dish, a very popular street food/snack in Korea. I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't as spicy, but the rice cake was chewy and the sauce was not too salty, not too dull.

Odang, fish cake, is served in a bowl of soup. I ordered a spicy pepper odang. Nothing spectacular.

Udon Noodle. Personally I am not a huge fan of Udon, so Mom ate the whole bowl.

Sondae, Korean sausage, used to be made of noodles wrapped in pig's intestine, but nowadays a lot of places have replaced the intestines with something more artificial...thankfully! Sondae here was way too greasy.

Overall an affordable (~$10 for the entire feast!) meal/snack. It reminded me of my childhood. Haha.

A Delicious Affair: Il Cipriani Bistro

Mom and I had to go to Seoul again today for a doctor's appointment. We took the 8:30 bus to Seoul and arrived in exactly 3 hours. The actual stay at the doctor's office was about 5 minutes, yet we had to make a 6-hour round trip...We had originally planned on staying at grandma's house for the night, but decided against it because we didn't want to leave Dad home alone for the weekend.

We ran some errands, which made the trip more meaningful. We had a late lunch at a pretty fancy Italian restaurant called Il Cipriani. The restaurant was located on the top floor of Hyundai Departmnet Store, an upscale store in a rich neighborhood called Apgu. Because it's extremely expensive to rent a space in his neighborhood, especially on the top floor of the department store, it is safe to assume that all the restaurants here are delicious, albeit not so friendly on the wallet.

Even though we arrived around 2 p.m., a bit late for lunch, we still had to wait about 30 minutes to be seated. After the waiter led us to our seats, we chose two different course menus. I was really craving risotto, so I went with Course A, which came with it a salad, a choice of pasta or risotto, and a drink for about $25. Mom chose Course B, which was a cup of cream soup, salad, pasta, steak or chicken, drink, and dessert ($30).

A bowl of warm, toasted bread and some sweet potato and regular potato was served before the meal. One of the main reasons I like Italian restaurant is the delicious bread it serves before the main meal. Sure, I often become full before the entree, but bread is so good!

The salad was...okay. Actually, I had to ask the server to take this plate back to the kitchen and bring me another plate without the dressing. The chef must have poured a whole cup of dressing on the first plate because it was extremely salty and oily. The second plate, sans dressing, was much better because I could actually taste the bitterness of the green without it being covered by the oily dressing.

This was the "pasta" portion of Mom's lunch. The pasta was cooked perfectly, and the olive oil sauce was neither greasy nor oily, just perfect savory taste. It was seasoned with garlic to add the savoriness.

My amazingly delicious Tomato Scallop Risotto! The rice melted in my mouth and it wasn't nauseating (like all the other creamy risottos I have had before), probably because it had some chili peppers in it. Nom nom nom :)


Mom ordered the steak rare, just the way I like it! I'm not a fan of steak, but I had a bite of this one and it was quite delicious. I especially enjoyed the grilled eggplant.

I forgot to take a picture of the dessert, but it was some grapes, pineapple, and sweet pumpkin pie. Overall, the food was pricey ($55+ for two people), but worth it considering the taste.

We stopped by Grandma's house to pick up some stuff and then took the 4:25 bus to Andong. We had originally bought tickets for the 5 p.m. bus, but barely got on the earlier one because there were just 2 extra seats. What a lucky day. Haha :)

A Delicious Affair: Semisan

In the afternoon, my family went to Daegu, Korea's 4th largest city behind Seoul, Busan, and Daeju, to buy shaved ice maker at Costco and summer sandals at a store found only in Daegu. The drive was a little less than 90 minutes. We took the dog with us and he kept trying to sit in the front while drooling on the chair, shedding his fur, and sniffing my face. Gross.

After all our shopping, including the purchase of a pair of beige summer sandals and glittery heels to add to my shoe collection, we went to a Japanese restaurant called Semisan on the top floor of the Lotte store.

We ordered a course menu, and the waitress continually showered us with different plates of food. This dish-slices of raw fish with greens and seaweed in red sauce, was a bit too spicy. It also needed to served cooler.

Pur next courses were sashimi, nigiri (in Korea, they are served with wasabi pre-stuffed in between the rice and the fish so my first bite made me cry...), a long plates of other seafood, etc. The fish was relatively fresh and I was indeed full after our feast.




The tempura, unfortunately, could have been sooo much better. The outside wasn't crispy at all...what a shame.

At the counter as we were ready to leave, Mom asked the waitress the meaning behind the restaurant's name.
"Semisan means a place that serves a lot of different sushi," she said. Hmm interesting.

A Delicious Affair: Sweet Potato Cake from Paris Baguette

I was unusually craving sweet dessert after dinner yesterday. Mom and I strolled outside to buy some popsicles at a grocery store nearby, but instead our footsteps stalled in front of Paris Baguette, one of Korea's most famous chain bakeries. I wanted a piece of sweet potato cake-a unique dessert found only in Korea-but there was none left in the display case.

"Oh well, I guess this is a sign from heaven telling me not to eat it," I thought. When Mom asked the guy behind the counter if there was any left, he said they had some slices in stock in the freezer. Since one of my goals this summer was to eat good food I wouldn't be able to eat in Boston, I decided to go for it and bought a slice. The baker told us it would take about 3~4 hours for the cake to thaw, so we decided to take it home and eat it the next day.

After breakfast this morning, I took out the cake from the fridge and dove in to the smooth, silky creamy cake.

To describe the composition of the cake, the top layer is covered with yellow powdery custard and topped with a dollop of whip cream and a slice of chocolate. There is another thin layer of whip cream with yellow cake underneath. Delectable sweet potato puree & cream is sandwiched between two layers of vanilla cake. The cake is so delicious that it melts right in your mouth.

Just looking at it makes my mouth water. But I'm not going to lie: I couldn't finish the cake because it was too creamy that my stomach was feeling nauseous after a few bites.