Mandu Guk

We went back to the mandu guk restaurant today for lunch. I still have no idea what the place is called, but it's always crowded with Koreans and the food is really good.

Today, we got a bunch of different side dishes. Clockwise, from upper left: julienned potatoes, green beans, ubiquitous kim chi, and my personal favorite, jap chae. The jap chae are potatoe noodles, and they have some type of mushroom and green onions usually, along with very thinly sliced carrots.


My coca-cola bottle, glass, from 2002 according to the copyright date on the side.


Mandu guk: dumpling soup. These are king dumplings, i.e., large.


The inside of a dumpling. I pull my dumplings out of the broth one at a time, put it in a small bowl, and break it into bite size pieces. The filling is a blend of pork, vegetable (possibly zucchini), and green onion, with some spices.

This is the front entrance, with trays of dumplings. There's a woman in the window making dumplings, and filling tray after tray with them.

Choco-Pie

When I lived in Japan a few years ago, I discovered these things called custard cakes. I called them "Japanese twinkies". They were these sponge cakes filled with cream, and I loved them. I can't really stand Twinkies, but Japanese custard cakes, I will eat an entire box, in an afternoon.

They have something similar here in Korea, but I can't really tell what flavor they are [this is where being illiterate can make life difficult!]. We did, however, discover Choco-Pies. These are a chocolate coated sponge cake with a marshmallow filling.




And if you'll note, the photo above matches pretty closely to the photo on the package. And yes, I ate this for breakfast today. With a glass of cola to chase it.

Random numbers

2 - the number of McDonald's within 1 block of my apartment
2 - the number of Dunkin Donuts on one block of Jongo (almost across the street from each other)
1 - KFC within 1 block of home
1 - Baskin Robbins within 1 block of home
1 - Pizza Hut within 1 block of home
1 - Starbucks within 1 block of home
2 - Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the same building (found another one down a side street off of Insa-dong today)

No wonder I don't feel homesick.

And...
3 - the number of big screen tv's on buildings that I can see from my living room window

Saigon Grill - lunch

One of the things I love about being in a big city is the variety of food options. Jacksonville had lots of bbq joints, and a few good restaurants, but the variety was pretty limited. Here, I can find just about anything, whether it's Turkish kebabs (aka gyros), Vietnamese beef pho, schnitzel, burger, or any number of other things that I don't know the name of or the ingredients that go into it.

To celebrate a friend's birthday the other day, several of us headed out to Itaewon for lunch and went to Saigon Grill. This place has been highly recommended by a Vietnamese co-worker. And it was good.

These are the vegetarian spring rolls.


These are a fried roll of some kind - I don't remember what was in them. But they were tasty.


My bowl of beef pho. It had nice good size pieces of meat and the broth had a good flavor to it. I added bean sprouts and sliced onion to it.


Baguette sandwich that had all sorts of goodies in it, including a barbecued meat of some kind, vegetables, tomatoes, pineapple, cilantro, and hot peppers. And yes, I picked the hot peppers off of my piece of sandwich.


This is the nasi goreng, which is an Indonesian style fried rice dish, that came with a fried egg on top.


The tea they served was hot, which was lovely on a cold day, and had a nice flavor to it. The plan is to come back and try this place for dinner one night.

Chinese food - lunch

I had lunch at the Chinese restaurant near work, the name of which I don't know. I simply refer to it as the Chinese restaurant in the pink building. The food is pretty good, and apparently the restaurant is on some recommendation list in Korea because when people do a search for places to eat in Itaewon, this one pops up. They do have an English language menu, but the descriptions don't usually match what comes out in my opinion.

This is chicken with mushrooms and vegetables over rice. It's listed on the rice dish section, with fried rice and a few other things, all of which seem to be side dishes. Apparently this is a lunch special. Who knew.


This was the pepper and beef dish, shown below. Since I'm not a fan of bell peppers, I went with the one above. I liked my dish. Now, the challenge is to remember which one it was for the next time I go to this restaurant.

Why I love my Kindle...

I splurged before coming here to Korea on a Kindle, an electronic book reader. And I love it. Even though I'm outside the U.S. and don't have the automatic magic download to the Kindle when I purchase a book feature and have to download it to my computer and then transfer it to the Kindle, I still love this gadget.

Why? I have almost 300 books, newspapers, and magazines on my Kindle. As a rough estimate, that would be a stack of books over 10 feet high on my bedside table. Hm, 10' vs a single book sized object? I know which one I'd rather ship back home when I leave.

One of the reasons why I love where I live...

I took a four day weekend this week! Talk about luxury.

Anyway, on Friday, I went wandering around my neighborhood and ended up visiting three different bookstores in several hours. First, in the basement level of the Jongno Tower is Bandi & Luni Bookstore. Then without even having to go outside from there, I can cut through Jonggak station from exit 3 over to exit 5 and straight into the back door of Youngpoong bookstore. Then, from the front door of Youngpoong, I come out on Cheonggyecheon, turn right, go to the main street, turn right, cross the street, and head downstairs to Kyobo Book Center.

I like the foreign books section of Youngpoong for literature and current fiction. They have a good mix of classics and current fiction. And I like Kyobo Book Center for non-fiction, technical books. They have a huge section (relatively speaking) of earth science, even including some remote sensing books. I don't see much in the way of GIS or other things I'm looking for these days, but there's plenty to keep me occupied.


View Larger Map

Random Insa-dong wandering

This is the small alley/street (Insa-dong 5) where we had lunch yesterday. The dumpling soup restaurant is just immediately past the white board on the left, where you can barely see the red lantern hanging from the eaves. Further up the alley are several other restaurants.


The front of the dumpling soup restaurant.


A statue on one of the benches along Insa-dong.


Hey look! It's Wonder Woman! In Korea.

Dumpling Soup (mandu guk)

Yesterday, we wandered down Insa-dong looking for a dumpling soup place I had heard about. It's down one of the small alleys that has a half dozen or so restaurants and tea houses right off of the main Insa-dong street. I love exploring these little alleys because you never know what you'll find down them. Usually, if it's early in the day, there will be stacks of plastic trays holding all the empty beer, soda, and soju bottles from the night before, ready to be collected. And in front of some of the places that serve fish, there will be tanks with fish and other sea creatures, ready for you to pick your meal.

I don't know the name of the place we went to. All I know is it is off of Insa-dong 5, and that you can see huge trays full of dumplings in the window, with more being made all the time. The place does not take credit cards, or reservations, and was quite casual. We loved it.

From the top, clockwise: chopped onion in a soy sauce mixture, jap chae (potato noodles with vegetables and sesame seeds), soy beans with dried fish (possibly fermented), bean sprouts lightly pickled with some vegetables, and cabbage kimchi.


The dumpling soup was 5000 won for a bowl. Extremely reasonably priced, especially for what we got. Three fist-sized dumplings each, with all the various side dishes.

Dumpling soup, containing three dumplings, sliced green onion, bits of fried sliced tofu, one piece of red pepper, some bits of beef brisket, and several rice cakes. The dumplings contained a mixture of minced meat and vegetable.


After lunch, we wandered up and down Insa-dong window shopping and avoiding getting hit by cars as they drove up the street. The street vendors selling food were out in force, despite the chilly air. They have covered their carts now with thick plastic covers with zippered openings, so they can stay warm.

Out the back entrance to our building, on the corner of Insa-dong is the hoddeok (I think this is what they are) vendor. These are balls of dough stuffed with a brown sugar mixture that are then fried. And they are yummy! And very hot. I have to be very careful when I eat these because when I get to the melted sugar inside, it's still very hot, and it oozes out everywhere and can burn. And it's very sticky.

Bungalow - Dinner

The other night, to celebrate one of my co-worker's last evenings in town before she escapes and returns to the warmer world of Florida, we headed over to Bungalow, a tropical style restaurant in Itaewon.

Bungalow is an interesting place, full of little side rooms with sand floors and candles all over the place. I was a bit worried about knocking over a candle and either lighting myself on fire or lighting someone or something else on fire. You have to take your shoes off before entering the sand areas, and since it's winter and tights are the norm, it was kind of weird to walk around on sand with tights on. And, the sand isn't heated, so it was a bit chilly. Like walking on a Santa Barbara beach in winter.


Our first round of drinks: white wine, a cosmopolitan, and a margarita. The margarita was tasty, but I really have to remember to ask for it on the rocks and with no salt in the future.


They have a rather eclectic menu, with burgers and satay. We opted for the 30,000 won skewer platter, which came with three skewers with beef, chicken, sausage, onion, green pepper, and pineapple, and a side of tortillas and potato wedges. Pretty tasty. Not sure I'd eat it again -- it was a lot of food, and some of the meat was a bit on the dry side.