Back to the Root: Korean Food at Koreana

There is one cuisine that I never get sick of, no matter how much I eat it: Korean. I grew up eating Korean food and it's the food I eat at home. Now that I am a college student living thousands of miles away from home and home-cooked meals, I am beginning to appreciate Korean food even more. I was really craving dolsot bibimbop so I decided to go to the Koreana Restaurant in Kendall Square.

One key thing about Korea cuisine is its generosity. Whatever you order, you get many different varieties of banchans, or little side dishes, including kimchi, flattened fish cake, pickled seaweed, spinach, and bean sprout. These banchans also make a great appetizer.

My entree, kimchi dolsot bibimbop, came in a sizzling hot pot. Smells so good! When I was in Korea this winter, I would ask my mom to make me dolsot bibimbop every single day, every meal. No exaggeration. This dolsot bibimbop had a generous portion of summer squash, bean sprout, mushroom, carrots, spinach and kimchi. Because of the sauce from the kimchi, I didn't even have to add that much chili paste.

All mixed up and ready to be gobbled :) I much prefer the bibimbop in a dolsot because it keeps the food warm (or, rather, hot!) the entire way through. My favorite part is the crackled rice at the bottom. It is like discovering tootsie roll in the center of the tootsie roll lolli pop.

My friend got a serving of galbi. It was sprinkled with scallions, and carrots & broccoli on the side.

With the brown rice in the back...I don't think char-grilled galbi does justice to Korean BBQ because the legit version has to be grilled right in front of you! Although one negative part about that is that your clothes stain afterward.

 

Korean Air: The Limits of Food on Air

Korean Air is known to offer one of the best airline foods. My expectation wasn't too hard nonetheless because it is extremely difficult to cook delicious food that had been pre-cooked and heated prior to being served.

During my 10:20am flight to JFK, lunch was served about 90 minutes into flying. The passengers were given a choice between bibimbop with "Gondre" vegetable rice or beef dish. I don't trust pre-packed, mass produced meat so I easily went with the former option.

In the large bowl were three different types of vegetables (radish, spinach, and some other greens) and ground beef.

On the way to Incheon, I had a regular bibimbop with white rice, but this one had the added Gondre vegetables. The white rice also tasted seasoned.

Put them all together and mix! Sadly the rice was way too sticky and it kept clumping together. I had to put some spoonfuls of seaweed soup in the rice to make it easier to mix. The bibimbop tasted average. I have a spoiled taste in bibimbop because I usually eat it in a hot stone pot that keeps the dish warm throughout the entire meal.

About four hours before landing, we were served dinner. The meals on the plane is so systematic: you eat and drink when you are offered. At first I chose the "Korean rice cake" dish because the stewardess said it had no meat. When I opened the package, the first thing I saw were pieces of beef. I changed the menu to the Chinese style seafood dish with fried rice.

Without an exaggeration, this was absolutely inedible. The fried rice was bland and flavorless, and the "seafood" rice had 3 pieces of jerky squids and a huge, FRIED, and extremely dry fish in awful black/brown sauce. I could taste extreme amount of sodium.

The jellyfish on the left was also very tough that I kept chewing and chewing but it won't disappear. The lychee had weird texture.

Underneath the fried surface was disgusting scales. I can't believe Korean Air would serve such thing.

Gamja Tang (Pork-On-The-Bone Soup): Quite a Misnomer

Some dishes are named after their main ingredients, such as mashed potato, eggplant parmesan, and chicken fingers (not fingers, obviously). Although the dish I had for lunch, Gamja-Tang (potato soup), uses potato, its main ingredients is pork.

The word gamja has two definitions: the more common meaning is potato, while the less known meaning is the spinal cord of a pig. The Gamja-Tang is made with broth from a pig's spinal cord. It is apparently a great hangover food.

The waiter set the table with basic banchans, which included cabbage kimchi, radish kimchi, sweetened anchovies, and long green peppers.

After a while, she brought a pot full of all the ingredients in the soup. The soup technically wasn't cooked yet, so we had to wait until it boiled and all the juices came out. The soup had clear noodles on top with huge scallions, chewy flour dough, and big chunks of back bone in the bottom.

The soup finally begins to boil, and you can see the spicy red broth emerging on top! The soup had very rich flavor from the juices from all these ingredients.

Even though the pig's back bone was rather fatty, the pure meat itself was so tender and juicy from being boiled in the water. It also had lots of savory flavors from the spicy sauce.

The best part about the dish is the very end when the waiter makes fried rice with the remainders from the soup. There are vegetales, seaweed, fish roe, and kimchi in the fried rice.

Waiting for the rice to crackler at the bottom...

The fried rice was full of rich flavors from the soup. You don't need to add any extra seasoning or sauce.

Diligently scraping the pot with a spoon. Yummy!

HOWEVER, because I don't particularly enjoy pork, I packed my own food from home: Bibimbop! Every day I have been at home and not dining out, I have eaten bibimbop and yet still don't get sick of it. This bibimbop had spiced radish, regular radish, squash, and lotus root.

I'm really going to miss this delicious food once I am back at Harvard...

Fusion Japanese and Korean Food from a Food Court

Because we arrived at home in Seoul a little later than usual, Mom and I decided to go to a food court at a mall nearby for a quick dinner. I am the most indecisive person when it comes to choosing what I want to eat, so a place like a food court, where I have to choose from a variety of cuisines and dishes, is the worst place for me. In the end, Mom ordered the fish roe rice and udon set menu, while I decided on the chili seafood omurice (fried rice wrapped in egg).

Mom's dish came out 10 minutes prior to mine, so we shared the food. I loved the fish roe rice, which is basically bibimbop with minced kimchi, vegetables, and fish roe in a hot stone pot. Instead of using chili paste, though, we only needed the kimchi for flavors. So delicious! I also love when the rice hardens and becomes crispy at the bottom of the hot pot. The udon didn't taste anything special, but I am not a huge fan of udon in the first place. The tempura, which I didn't eat (I don't eat fried food anymore!), was very greasy, according to Mom.

Finally the big TV screen indicated that my omurice is ready so I went to pick it up. The wait was certainly not worth it because the sauce was extremely, EXTREMELY sweet to the point where I had to wipe it off. It tasted like an awful combination of ketchup and sugar. Yuck.

Also since the sauce was literally surrounding the omurice, it was overwhelming and shielded all the taste of the rice and the egg. The fried rice was lacking in flavor and I regretted getting this meal for sure. Well, at least now I know what NOT to get :p

Mediocre In-Flight Meals from Korean Air

During the 13 hours and 50 minutes flight to Korea via the Korean Air, I was served two meals of mediocre quality. The Korean Air is known as an airline with one of the better in-flight meals. About 90 minutes after boarding, the stewardess served us lunch. I had a choice among bibimbop, beef, and chicken, and of course I--craving some Korean food--went with the good ole Korean food.

The meal consisted of Korean pickles, pineapple pieces, sticky rice, a bowl of ground beef, spinach, bean sprouts, mushroom, and squash, and seaweed soup. I started with the instant soup, which was surprisingly tasty. It warmed my body. I then had the pineapple, except I spitted it out because I got the hard pieces without any sweet taste. Instead of putting the rice into the bowl and mixing all the ingredients together with the red paste, I mixed the rice and the vegetables separately. I am a huge fan of bibimbop, my favorite Korean food, so the meal itself tasted pretty decent. I prefer the bibimbop served in a hot stone pot, but of course that won't be feasible 10,000 feet above ground.

Five hours before arrival, we had dinner. This time there was no Korean food on the menu. Instead I was left with the choice among beef, chicken, or fish. I eliminated fish right away because I didn't want some old dry piece of fish to ruin my love for it. I also wanted to eat rice, so I chose the beef dish, which had a side of rice with some sesame seeds. Sadly, this was one of the worst airline meals I have ever had. The beef was extremely high in sodium and the rice tasted bland without any flavors. The orange pieces were smothered in mayonnaise so I didn't even touch it, while the chocolate cake was 3/4 cream and 1/4 super dry chocolate cake. The pretzel bread was nice because it was warm and tasted like it just came out of the oven!

A Delicious Affair: Takemura

My momma told me to never go out for sushi on a rainy day—something about the sushi chefs not serving a fresh filet of fish on those days, she said. I usually listen to what Mom says, but I was craving sushi so much the other day that I just had to be the disobedient daughter.

Because I was lounging at the Harvard Kennedy School around dinnertime, I decided to go to the nearest Japanese restaurant called Takemura (18 Eliot St. Cambridge, MA). The atmosphere leaves something more to be desired, as I was not a fan of its plain wooden furniture in a dimly lit basement. Since I came with a close girl friend, thus not needing a romantic setting, the atmosphere didn’t matter too much.

Takemura’s extended menu offers a wide range of food, ranging from sashimi to udon noodle to even Korean food. The most impressive menu, however, was the different specialty roll with unique names like “Obama Maki” and “Red Sox.” Despite the weather, I ordered a nigiri sushi platter ($16.95), chef's choice of assorted fillets of raw fish served on sushi rice, while my friend had Dol Sot Bi Bim Bap ($12.95), a Korean delicacy of beef, fried egg, and assorted vegetables served on a bed of rice in a sizzling stone pot. We also decided to share salmon-scallop roll ($10.95), scallop and cucumber roll with filet of salmon and slices of avocado on top.

There was a large group of 10 dining in the restaurant, so the waiter told us that our sushi roll might be delayed a bit. We sipped on a warm cup of green tea and citron tea as we waited for our food.

The first entrée that graced our table was Dol Sot Bi Bim Bap. The sizzling sound of rice, together with the savory smell of beef, vegetables, and egg frying in the hot pot, made my mouth water. We squirted a dollop of red pepper paste and mixed all the ingredients together. The phrase “Saving the best for last” is so suiting to this dish—the lightly scorched rice that sticks to the bottom of the hot stone pot is crispier than potato chips, a perfect ending to a delicious, healthy dish.

While we were busy digging our spoons into the hot stone pot, the waiter brought the nigiri sushi platter and salmon-scallop roll on white, rectangular plates. The sushi platter had six pieces of nigiri, or raw filet of fish (two tuna, salmon, shrimp, yellowtail, mackerel) over rice, as well as six tuna maki. Both the shrimp and yellowtail nigiri were a bit on the dry side, and the rice could have been seasoned with more flavors. Furthermore, there was an imbalance in the amount of tuna and rice in the maki because all I could taste was the rice.

(This isn't exactly what we had, but it's close enough)

On the other hand, the salmon-scallop roll was a sweet surprise to an otherwise mediocre dining experience. The layers of avocado and salmon on top added visual attractiveness to the sushi roll with thin slices of cucumber and scallop. The sushi pieces were so big that I had to eat them in two bites. The fresh salmon melted right as it touched the tip of my tongue. The mishmash of crunchy cucumber and slimy scallop provided a fantastic textural combination.

Although the restaurant was packed despite it being a weekday night, the waiter constantly refilled our tea as soon as it ran out and asked us about our food. Overall, Takemura is not an exceptional, four-star quality restaurant, but a decent place for anyone craving one food item the Harvard dining hall can never serve.