A tip on finding restaurants in Korea via other people’s somewhat outdated blog posts: Make sure to double-check said restaurant is still in existence before spending an hour roaming around in the freezing cold, growing increasingly pissy as hunger sets in, while hopelessly searching for a place that has long since closed its doors.
For once we had a plan. We found a restaurant that we both agreed on and we even had directions, which we followed to a T. How could we go wrong? We walked confidently to our desired location — a spicy chicken restaurant — passing up landmark after landmark and mentally checking them off in our heads. Finally we arrived at the restaurant…. except … where was it?
How many times in our lives were we going to reenact the exact same scene of getting lost trying to find a restaurant in Korea?
With every detour down a dark, winding alley we become more discouraged. We re-traced our steps, wondering if we missed something, a turn, a sign, anything. We didn’t. We followed the directions to the exact same spot where the restaurant was ‘supposed’ to be and just like before, no restaurant. I must have re-read the directions a hundred times before it finally dawned on me that we couldn’t find the restaurant because the restaurant had closed. I peered up into the dark space with blacked out windows where the restaurant should have been and only then did I notice the darkened restaurant sign. The restaurant looked completely abandoned with no signs of life whatsoever, cardboard boxes stacked high against the walls and teetering precariously as they climbed towards the ceiling.
Time for Plan B. Except we had no Plan B. And we were so cold. So. Very. Cold.
We stopped inside a convenience store and Sly asked the sales clerk if he knew of any good restaurants nearby. At this point we really didn’t care about things like good reviews or even type of cuisine. The clerk said, “every restaurant is pretty much the same.” Great. Awesome. Thanks. He wasn’t being mean in saying that, but still it didn’t help either.
Back out on the cold streets we walked about a block, contemplating where to go, when I noticed a cluster of lively restaurants grouped together up a narrow side street. I grabbed Sly’s arm and led him up the hill towards what I thought was a restaurant. “Whatever this is, let’s just eat here,” I said. “I don’t care if it sucks.”
Through the restaurant’s windows, opaque with steam, I saw tables of people huddled around steaming bowls of soup and sizzling platters of grilled food. If nothing else, it certainly looked a million times warmer inside than outside.
Once seated, we peeled off our layers of warm clothing and ordered a set menu (I think this was maybe the “Couple’s Meal”) of beef and pork with sides.
We started with a salad and then our server returned with a plate of butter, several hunks of cheese, and a mound of bean sprouts. After melting the butter on the grill, he added the cheese squares, then the sprouts, and then finally a hunk of beef which he seared, then sliced.
It’s hard to beat sizzling, grilled meat, but honestly, the grilled cheese with buttered sprouts was my favorite part of the meal!
Palsaek Samgyeopsal is known for its local pork belly marinated in a variety of eight special sauces including ginger, wine, ginseng, pine leaves, herbs, curry, soybean paste, and gochujang. The grilled meat is then eaten wrapped in lettuce and/or sesame leaves stuffed with your choice of vegetables. Even though I try to avoid eating pork, which is especially hard in Asia, I cannot deny that it tasted delicious. I loved trying all the different flavors of pork too. I liked the pine leaf pork the best.
As part of our set menu, we chose a tureen of seafood soup from a selection of hot-pot style dishes. Filled with clams, mussels, and vegetables and swimming in a delicate seafood broth, it was the perfect dish to slurp up on a cold day.
But wait…what the heck was this little chewy ball floating in the seafood soup?
I didn’t think twice as I popped a spoonful of soup into my mouth.
I had no idea what I was eating when I bit into the tough, chewy exterior and a fishy, bitter, liquid squirted out. I looked at Sly, confused. “What is this?” I asked, undecided if I liked or disliked what I chewed in my mouth. “Fish stomach, I think.” Sly replied. “Do you like it?” I considered this question for a moment. Did I like it? My brain was still in the middle of processing what I ate. It was too soon to really formulate a like or dislike. More than anything, and because texture over flavor is usually the reasoning for why I like/dislike something, the texture was unexpectedly chewy. Like rubber. And the payoff for chewing the rubbery ball was a burst of bitterness. Not my most favorite thing I’ve ever tried, though maybe over time it will be something — like meonggae, which formerly held first place as the worst thing I’ve ever eaten — that I could maybe not love, but become something that I don’t necessarily mind eating.
A side note on eating “weird” food: Growing up half-Asian in Texas before being bi-racial was considered “cool” and before the advent of “celebrity chefs”, Food Network, and “foodies,” meant that I was not only a weird-looking kid with the weird name but also one that ate “weird” food. It embarrassed me to bring my mom’s Vietnamese food — so beautiful and lovingly made, and without a doubt a million times better than anything being served or eaten in a public school cafeteria — because eating home-cooked meals among a sea of steamed burgers and wilted curly fries meant having to endure a line of questioning that went something like this:
“What is that?”
“Egg rolls”
“Chinese food?”
“Not really, my mom is Vietnamese.”
“Viet what?”
“Vietnamese”
“VITTA-MESE?”
“Sure.”
“You look Chinese though”
“Really? I don’t think so.”
-OR-
“Where’d you get the Chinese food?”
“It’s not Chinese.”
“But egg rolls are Chinese food.”
-OR-
“Are you going to eat THAT?” (scrunches face in a look of disgust).
“Yeah, I am.”
“Is it GOOD?” (No, it sucks. That’s why I’m eating it.)
“It’s really good. Want to try a bite?” (I hand over a piece of egg roll which the other person takes, then sniffs, then grimaces. I have to resist rolling my eyes.)
“What’s in it?”
“Just try it. It’s an egg roll. There’s nothing “weird” in it.”
“But I don’t really like Chinese food.”
“How do you know if you don’t try it?”
“I just know.”
“Ok. Then don’t try it.” (At this point I get up to throw my trash away, when I come back, the egg roll is gone.)
“Did you like it?”
Friend nods and fake-smiles.
I found out later said friend threw the egg roll away. My mom’s amazing egg roll, better than any egg roll I’ve ever eaten anywhere, a quiet symbol of her love, caerlessly tossed aside, uneaten, unloved, in a plastic garbage bin, the mere thought of which still pains me to this day.
-OR-
“You going to eat that?”
“Yes I am.”
“Ewwww…that’s sooo…WEIRD.”
(SIGH.) “I think it’s good.”
And on and on and on. So many variations of this same conversation. Conversations that bonded me for life with other children with immigrant parent(s) and had the adverse effect towards those who persisted on remaining oblivious. And this was over an egg roll! What could be more innocuous? Imagine if people knew all the “weird” foods I ate at home! Not just scary Asian foods, but also European/German foods with unpronounceable names! After a while, I no longer brought my mom’s cooking to school. It was just not worth spending an entire lunch period having to justify what I was eating. It got old, and when you’re a kid, no matter how ok you are with being “different,” some days you really want to be left alone.
The point of this story is that I take offense when people say things are “gross” or “weird” when really what they are trying to say is that it’s “different.” Strange does not automatically mean bad. It’s fine to have food preferences, it’s fine to not like everything you eat, but I think it’s pretty lame to tell someone what they are eating is disgusting, when many other people and cultures relish in eating that same food, are thankful to have amt food at all. And it’s even lamer if you’re unwilling to try it before drawing a conclusion. It’s also a HUGE pet peeve of mine when people sniff food as if they can determine the flavor that way. As if an average person with an average sense of smell can truly gauge “good” or “bad” by taking a whiff. Perhaps if the food was rotten or spoiled (though for the most part who would be eating spoiled food?) but many things that “smell bad” — like stinky tofu and smelly cheeses — are actually quite wonderful.
But back to the fish guts in the soup. The fish guts were not my cup of tea and is probably something I would never willingly order on its own again. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten (that award goes to hongeohoe, fermented skate fish that tastes like ammonia) but I didn’t necessarily find it “weird.”
Fish stomachs aside, the rest of the meal was perfectly “normal.” One that any person with even the blandest of palates and any level of adventure could fully enjoy.
DETAILS | Palsaek Samgyeopsal (팔색삼겹살)
Palsaek Samgyeopsal (팔색삼겹살) | CUISINE: Korean BBQ | COST: approx $50 for 2-3 people | LOCATION: Multiple locations in Seoul and internationally (apparently really popular in Malaysia). We visited the Hongdae Branch in Seoul. See Map. | DESCRIPTION: We had no idea when stumbling across this restaurant that it’s actually a very popular place, and apparently one of the top samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly) restaurants in Seoul. Many times pork belly is not seasoned prior to cooking the meat. The seasoning comes afterward either by dipping it in a dish of salt or from the addition of gochujang (soy chili paste) when wrapped in lettuce. What makes this restaurant unique are the 8 different pork marinades aka “8 colors (pal-saek) of pork (samgyeopsal) aka “rainbow pork.” Some of the marinades are quite subtle, but others are quite robust and really accentuate the flavor of the pork. In typical Korean fashion, each of the 8 “colors” promotes a different aspect of health including, anemia, growth, healthy skin, etc. Sly and I like to joke that every Korean dish is “good for stamina,” or so we’ve been told on multiple occasion. Each order of meat comes with endless sides and some of the set menus come with a hot soup dish of your choosing. I can’t quite remember exactly but I believe the menu was in both Korean and English. | GOOD FOR: Groups, all palates — nothing was particularly spicy unless you chose it to be. | VERDICT: On a cold, wintry night, Palsaek Samgyopsal really hit the spot. I especially enjoyed trying all the marinades and felt that given the amount of food we were given it was a pretty good deal. Next time I would probably order a couple additional sides of cheese.
Karen
March 9, 2016 at 12:16 amWhen you are back in the States can we please go eat out together? Anywhere. I have a pretty weak stomach though, but I still think we could make quite an adventure of it. Rachel, you in too?
Just 3-4 years ago I had a student from Honduras who brought in yummy food her mother made, which I can’t remember the name of, of course. (it took me 10 minutes just to remember the girl’s name). I was always offered to try it, so I did. And before any other child could say anything I declared it the best thing ever – which it pretty much was. It was like a light chicken and cheese enchilada on wonderfully soft tortillas. So then all the kids wanted to try it, and I think – the students were only first graders – they were all secretly a little jealous. I have only worked in title one schools – where the majority of students get a free or reduced priced lunch.
veronika
March 9, 2016 at 7:37 amYes! We can all go try a new restaurant together! Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, veganburger!
I have always secretly thought that a lot of a kid’s perception of food (or anything) comes from his/her parents. In other words, if a parent is excited to try something, usually the kid is? All of my friends who are picky eaters also have kids who are picky eaters, which doesn’t seem coincidental. I know that’s not always the case, and I know a kid’s palate develops over time, but that has been my observation, even with kids from multi-ethnic families.
I’m glad that more people are foodies these days (though I hate that term and the pretension that comes with it). I read an article recently about school lunches in Brooklyn – how parents are next level about creating beautiful and over the top gourmet lunches/bentos for their kids. As much as hipsters annoy me I can’t deny that would be pretty cool. If only I had been born in Brookyln circa 2010! I had the weird name, huge glasses, vintage thrift store clothes, and weird lunches that would have guaranteed my popularity! Damn.
Believe it or not I have a pretty weak stomach too. It’s one of the main reasons why I changed my diet considerably over 5 years ago. I try to stay away from trigger foods like gluten, soy, red meat, processed sugar, etc, but from time to time (usually weekends, and sometimes on vacay) I’ll indulge…and pay for it later. I know it seems like I eat everything in sight on this blog but really it’s a very small snapshot of what I eat on a daily basis!
Karen
March 9, 2016 at 10:40 am1. I LOVE all things vegetables and Brycen is . . . well we are slowly warming up to them. It was funny – He loved all veggies as a little tot – when food is first introduced. He could eat an entire bag of peas or a whole can of carrots. I was delighted. I was about to move on to beets, when all of a sudden, just after his first birthday – he was DONE with all vegetables. Luckily he would eat them pureed for the longest time, and now we motivate him with the promise veggies give you muscles, and of course with all sorts of bribery. Whatever works.
2. I cannot wait to make him lunch when he goes to pre-k in the fall. I plan to be all hipster with the bento boxes. We usually make a plate of cheese, pretzels or crackers, a sliced meat, veggies and a fruit for lunch or a play date snack when he is here. For some odd reason, we started calling it the poo poo platter and the name stuck. Seriously. Anyone want to help me make a poo poo platter? Ha!! Maybe it is because little boys love potty talk.
3. I can’t believe you have a weak stomach! Well I can, but it surprised me. Processed sugar is a huge trigger for me too, At Christmas time I have to be so careful. lately I am staying away as best as possible from candy/cake/cookies and awarding myself with a little piece of dark chocolate if I made it through the day. Having a smoothie or 2 a day as really helped.
4. I don’t think your name is weird at all!
veronika
March 9, 2016 at 11:10 am– I hated peas and carrots as a kid, though I think a lot of that was MY DAD hated cooked peas and cooked carrots because he was forced to eat them as a kid. Actually my dad didn’t like vegetables at all, but my mom did, and we were forced to eat them, and over time I realized that oh, you can prepare a vegetable many different ways, not just boil the crap out of them or eat them frozen or canned. I still do not really like cooked carrots or peas, but I’m ok with eating them now.
– Yes, with the bentos! In Asia they have all kinds of things you can add to bentos to make them cute for kids — like little googly eyes and cartoon characters. I need to find you some and send along with a bunch of other stuff I’ve been collecting…
– I know most people cannot believe I have a weak stomach but I really have to be so careful about what I eat, especially when I travel. I am referred to as the canary in the coal mine. If I taste something to be the slightest bit off or if I get sick off something I ate, then NOBODY will touch the food. Usually they will be fine though and I’ll be miserable for days. I know it’s dumb but it didn’t occur to me until maybe 5 yrs ago that I could possibly have food allergies or food sensitivities so I eliminated pretty much all the trigger foods to see what happened. The result was I felt extremely energized and didn’t always feel like I had a brick in my stomach weighing me down. Anyway we aren’t perfect about it, I still love my cheetos and hamburgers, but most of what I eat (and don’t blog about) is actually very boring and very ‘clean.’ When I travel I LOVE to sample all the different foods but I am careful about what I eat and when. It probably seems to go against everything you’ve read/heard about eating in foreign countries, but I have actually felt that, say, eating locally, from a food cart is many times a lot better/safer because 1. the ingredients are usually super fresh and 2. you can watch how the food is prepared. On the other side of the coin, the sickest I’ve ever been was eating fast food in the US. Actually 3/4 of the worst food experiences were a result of eating fast food or food from an American restaurant.
– you don’t think my name is weird bc you don’t know my middle name (do you?). It’s not like “Foundation” weird, like that poor kid in your class (was that his name?) but it’s “different” enough that it makes me cringe when I tell people my middle name and they repeat it back to me a million times and I have to correct them or even worse when the teacher had to read my full name in class and then I had to correct them and have everyone stare at me while we went through the normal back and forth of name pronunciation.
Karen
March 10, 2016 at 3:04 amYour middle name must be Carrot!!
veronika
March 10, 2016 at 7:18 amNoooooooooooo. It’s actually Ramen. 😀
Kevin
March 10, 2016 at 9:18 amI think I would be a little worried at having the food cooked at my table. I’d be afraid of hot grease/oil splatter. Also, I hope the person that threw away you mother’s egg roll was stricken by a gastric calamity too powerful to withstand and too humiliating to confess.
Keeping Good Thoughts…
veronika
March 10, 2016 at 11:43 amI guess I’ve never thought about the grease splatter – it hasn’t happened (yet)… The food is more sizzly than splattery, it seems.
christine
March 23, 2016 at 10:38 amThis post brought back so many memories of those same exact childhood lunchtime scenarios (and again with the “weird” middle-name) I can still hear in my head, “Ewwwwww, what’s THAT!?” upon opening up my lunchbox. Pretty sure we bonded over this at some point during our ice cream ANTI-social. || 🙂
veronika
March 27, 2016 at 9:08 pmI think we bonded over this MANY times! || At the anti-social I’m pretty sure we were just straight trash talking/mumbling in the corner, watching everyone eat melted ice cream. Hello, it’s Texas? And ice cream? It’s called get a cooler.
Inex
August 22, 2016 at 3:09 pmHahaha I had the same experiences with you growing up in Australia, it was very hard trying to eat my lunch in private without any question asked or weird look given lol. PS: This palsaik restaurant is very famous in Perth as well now, serving up the ‘rainbow’ pork belly 😀
veronika
August 22, 2016 at 7:35 pmHow funny! Do you find the majority of Australians to eat a somewhat…er…straightforward diet? I am always curious to think how different things may or may not be if I were to attend grade school this day and age!
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Interesting about Palsaik – I had no clue it was such a popular chain!
Inex
August 23, 2016 at 12:56 pmYes! Definitely quite straight forward and lacking variety in comparison to Asian countries.
The typical lunch at school’s canteen didn’t change a lot from 16 years ago when I was in high school. These days we still see some sausage roll, corn jack, chiko roll, sandwich, the best selling toasted bun with pinapple slices on top (used to be 50 – 60 cent 16 years ago) haha and also salad (pretty sure my school didn’t sell any back then)….
Although… outside of school environment, kimchi is getting more popular these days due to the influx of Korean people in Perth with a few restaurants serving kimchi fried rice, kimchi porridge, kimchi toastie and kimchi burger 😀 (*happy dance*). We also have 5-6 chimek restaurants here! (*happy tears*)
I can’t wait to visit Korea at the end of the year and seriously, your blog is very very very helpful!
I bookmarked the Jagalchi and colourful Greece-looking-village in Busan for me to visit. We’ll also make a one day trip to Daegu, I’ve been wanting to visit the coffee shop called Cafe de Nunchi there and take a look around Daegu.
veronika
August 23, 2016 at 1:42 pmI heard that Asian food was pretty popular in Australia but then I never was quite sure how it translated to Aussie palates. My sister-in-law is from Oz and I don’t really think of her as much of a foodie, at least relative to us. Or maybe her preference for food, based on what we have eaten together, is kind of along the lines of meat and potatoes so I’ve always sort of wondered what was considered typical Aussie fare – and if people were open to ethnic cuisines. We’ve been to NZ and outside of Auckland the food was pretty…er…basic. That being said, is Luke Nguyen popular there? His cooking show is one of my faves!
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Where will you visiting in Korea? Have you been before? In Busan there’s supposed to be a place near the cliff temple that sells amazing prawns (to be eaten while watching the sunset apparently), but we never quite made it out there. A bulk of the popular places are around Haeundae. You def. should some bingsu – super popular there!
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In Daegu – there’s a place that sells jam bread that I’ve been meaning to try. Like you rip open a loaf of bread and jam spills out. Drool. So many cute cafes here, and Korea in general! I don’t think I’ve been to Nunchi! If you’re into Harry Potter, there’s an HP cafe AND and pojangmacha style place here. 😎
Inex
August 25, 2016 at 4:22 pmLUKE NGUYEN IS *still huge* IN AUSTRALIA.. oops hahaha yes, he’s still very famous until now and still frequent the SBS and Food Network tv station 🙂 As another Vietnamese, my husband is very proud of Luke Nguyen hahaha 😀
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Food scene here is deft way more diversified than before but I think most people are still trying to stick to what they know and familiar with :-). Desserts is also a big thing, especially with the freak shake and colourful decorated pancake, decorated pannacotta… anything insta-worthy will attract customers easily hahaha doesn’t have to taste good :-\
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I never visited Korea before, but we’re planning to start from to Jeju (3 days) then Seoul (staying at Hongdae), then one day trip to: Busan, Daegu, Jeonju, Gyeongju. Ooooh, I make sure to go around Haeundae and eat some Bingsu when I visit Busan! Cold weather is a perfect weather for icey dessert hahaha. Also… do you know what will the weather like at the end of December? … Woah, food-wise it seems that there are a lot of things to try in Korea! 😐 I should bring a one size bigger jeans there hahaha 😀
veronika
August 26, 2016 at 8:41 amHa! Have you been to a Luke Nguyen restaurant? I’m so curious! I confess I’ve made quite a few dishes using his recipes and the flavor profiles are dead on to me. I also love seeing where he travels in VN – before we visited last year I totally consulted some of his shows to see where he went!
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What the heck is a freak shake????
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Korea will be cold when y’all come visit, but it most likely won’t reach the bone-chilling temps in Jan/Feb. This year it was SO SO COLD, but I remember last December as being “normal” cold. Haha. Def. make sure you rent a car in Jeju! If you like cool buildings, check out Tadao Ando’s Genius Loci and Glass House. We missed it the last time we visited (bc no car), but next time! I think a lot of restos and stuff might be closed during the winter season, but I’m not certain. Just double check before you go! And yes, bingsu is perfect cold weather food! 🙂
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Gyeongju – try and stay in one of those hanok houses if you can, it kind of suits the mood of the town to do so, and the ones in Gyeongju are quite nice (some are new builds but look very traditional). You can find a ton of them on airbnb. I’m sure you already have a airbnb acct but if you don’t, here’s my referral: https://www.airbnb.com/c/vvolz – it will get you a discount on your first booking.
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Daegu – my favorite little area is Kim Gwangseok-gil Street (there’s a glowing orb sculpture on the hill behind the ampitheatre that is my fave). If you look around the alleys there are some cute places to eat and drink. I like this cafe called Sundance Farm and there’s also this JP-fusion restaurant/flower shop in a hidden alley in the nearby market called Barazi. It’s a cute place with good sangria. Also, make sure you eat hotteok (popular street/market food)! So good during the winter. I also love hot roasted chestnuts and roasted sweet potatoes — can be found everywhere in KR in the winter. Mansion 5 is another popular cafe here (downtown). When it doubt, go to a department store and there’s all kinds of places to eat and drink in the basement level. Plus it’s warm! They even have a Beard Papa! Even more places to add to your list: Crescendo Coffee & Dessert (fmug of tiramisu decorated with cat face), Samsong Bakery (for the so-called ‘drug bread), and butter roll pain france (for the strawberry jam bread – http://visitdaegu2011.blogspot.kr/2016/06/korean-bakeries-most-popular-bakeries.html). Can you tell I’m obsessed with bread?
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In Seoul – well, there’s obvs a ton of place to eat, and so much awesome street food, but a couple American places opened up recently: Shake shack and Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes is super popular in SF bc of their cruffins. There’s always a line, but apparently at the Seoul location: no line. Don’t quote me on that though. I also think the temple food restaurant in Insadong is a good experience — kind of pricey and a bit touristic, but also really cool looking on the inside. Plus, if you’re in Insadong, you can go to the poo cafe. :’D Tons of street food and little dumpling houses as well. SO MUCH GOOD and CHEAP FOOD. You’ll definitely need to bring bigger jeans for this trip (or just buy them at uniqlo! haha).
Inex
November 2, 2016 at 11:47 amHahaha I never been to Luke Nguyen’s restaurant at all not sure if he has any in Perth actually! I think he only has one in Sydney but it’s not really feasible to travel to Sydney and back. For the same cost I can travel to other countries hahaha 🙂 ps: I never tried any of his recipe as well. Are there a lot of good Vietnamese restaurants in Korea? We have plenty of great Vietnamese restaurants in Perth <3
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Freak shake is the milkshake with heaps of gigantic sweet toppings like donuts, candies, jelly beans, icy poles, drumstick ice creams etc.
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Oh man 😀 This was my first time hearing about Tadao Ando Genius Loci museum, I have added it to the list of places to visit in Jeju! My friend's mum told me that it will be super duper cold in Korea this December hahaha but glad to hear that December's weather is better than January 😀
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Your department store advice is very useful 😀 I miss Beard Papa, my dad usually bought a lot of beard papa whenever he traveled someone and spotted the stall! And yes, can totally tell that you love your bread hahahaha I have make a reminder to check this comment again when I get home so I can write everything down !! Thank you so much for your help Veronica!!! You'll make a good tour guide :'D
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SEOUL HAS A SHAKE SHACK?! and MR HOLMES?! What….!!!! that's amazing! I don't mind queuing to try both of those places (if there will be queue) hahaha 🙂 I did a quick search and found this: https://seoulsearching.net/2015/08/04/%EB%98%90%EC%98%B9%EC%B9%B4%ED%8E%98-poop-cafe/ after you mentioned about the poop cafe hahahahaha so cuteeeeee 😀 OMG!!! this is a very dangerous place to eat… hahaha I always wish that I'm one of those guys with a really quick metabolism rate and can't gain weight doesn't matter what I eat… :')
veronika
November 2, 2016 at 12:33 pmHaha yup that’s the poop cafe! It’s actually a lot more subtle than I originally anticipated but it’s still fun to visit and the area has a lot going on.
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Unfortunately I’ve only eaten Viet food once while in KR – and it was good enough to scratch the itch but being half-Viet it’s pretty hard to really live up to my expectations. The problem is a lot of the herbs/veg that I think of as crucial to Viet food isn’t very prevalent here, namely lime, cilantro, thai basil, and the right kind of chilis. Most “Viet” places combine Thai and Viet (with a dash of Korean) and doesn’t taste quite right to me. Viet soup is starting to become really popular though, especially in Seoul, so you may have some luck there. Have you ever been to VN?
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So update on Mr. Holmes – we attempted to go the last time we were in Seoul and totally didn’t get any cruffins. They ‘release’ their cruffins 2x a day and I’m guessing there was a line to get them since we arrived like an hour later and they were completely cleaned out of all and every baked good! This was also on a Sunday evening so maybe try a week day. Also, there are now two Mr. Holmes locations (we went to the original). Shake Shack, I think you can probably still expect a line. After our failed cruffin attempt we didn’t even want to try Shake Shack. Instead, we ate at Bad Farmers, which is a really nice break from all the meat that Koreans typically eat. We thoroughly enjoyed our salads.
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Some more Seoul places to add to your list (upcoming blog posts soon): Hungo Ringo (famous for their green tea pound cake. It’s honestly a bit dryer than I’m used to but flavor-wise good and the cafe itself is so adorable) and Cafe Conhas (awesome container coffee shop with resident dog). The Mangwon neighborhood is like the next up-and-coming area in Seoul and has so many cafes and cute shops. It’s close to Hongdae but feels more residential and less of a college town. We also ate at The Beastro for brunch and loved it. I don’t know if it would appeal to you given it is American food, but it was the first time I’ve eaten really good, legit, American food in Korea.
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Not to scare you but it all of a sudden became COLD this past week. In Seoul, it’s already below freezing. Maybe this will change though…
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I know what you mean about wanting to eat everything without gaining weight! I wish I had my 15 yr old metabolism back. Holy moly I could eat SO much and never gained anything. Now, not so much. 🙁