Lunch! Barbecue bulgogi and cold noodles

Today we went to a bulgogi barbecue restaurant that also serves cold noodles.  I couldn't possibly tell you the name, but it's down an alley near Exit #4 of the Euljiro-4 station. It was a lovely day for a walk, so we walked the 20 minutes or so over that way.  I'm still trying to try as many different Korean foods as I can with a good friend before she leaves Seoul on a new adventure.

At each place setting, there is a dish of the insides of leeks (the green stuff), with some red cabbage and onion (left) and a bowl of water kimchi with cabbage, radish, and green onion.

There was also the regular kimchi (top) and thinly sliced potato (bottom), plus the barbecue fixings.  You take a piece of lettuce, put cooked meat on top, then put some of the soybean paste mixed with pepper paste (small bowl on the left) on top.  If you're feeling really brave, you can add raw garlic (small bowl in the middle).  I opt for grilled garlic myself.


Bulgogi is very thinly sliced beef marinated in a mixture of soy sauce, garlic, and sesame oil.  Then, in this case, it's grilled with some mushrooms.  This is the before picture.  Because the meat is marinated so long, it no longer has that pink color raw beef usually has.


After grilling.

Along with our bulgogi, we also had Pyong-yang style noodles.  These are very thin buckwheat noodles (kind of like soba), in a slightly sour cold broth.  Vinegar and mustard were brought to the table to add to taste.  Also in the broth were bits of white kimchi (kimchi without the red pepper paste) and very thinly sliced bits of Asian pear.  The cold noodles are a northern Korean style food.