What are they hiding?

During our first few weeks here, when we were actively looking for good places near Herren Haus to eat lunch, I realized that I was experiencing exceptionally high levels of anxiety when approaching a new restaurant for the first time. It took me a while to figure out why.

Take a look at these restaurant storefronts. Imagine you are walking by and trying to decide if you want to go in for a meal.

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Are they open are closed? Are they even in business? Is anybody eating in them? Are they filthy or clean? Is it floor seating or chair seating? Why would you walk into a restaurant when you don't know the answers to any of these questions?

A few of the restaurants have small "영업중" ("Open") signs hanging on the door (such as the last one, just above), but most do not. The windows are covered with thick paper or darkly tinted, making it impossible to see inside. There is no way to know what kind of place you are getting yourself into without opening the door and stepping inside.

Once I became conscious of the fact that I couldn't see inside these places, I understood the source of my anxiety. I remain perplexed that restaurants here go to such great lengths to hide their appearance from the outside world. In America restaurants are generally transparent: the goal is to entice people in by letting them see what it's like inside. Something else is going on here, but I don't understand what it is.

On the plus side, most of these restaurants have only one to four items on their menu, and those items are written on the facade. So you pretty much know what your choices are going to be, and you choose your restaurant based on what food you want to eat.

By the way, restaurant #2 (Cheongha Hanjeongsik 청하 한정식) is one of our favorite places. We go about once a week for lunch. Here is what a double order of their $6 Korean set meal looks like.

We've been going there long enough now that the owners are very friendly to us. And we've started to experience changes to the side dishes as different vegetables come into season.