Anju

Koreans don't drink alcohol without eating. Doesn't matter what you are having: beer, soju, whiskey, wine, whatever. You've gotta have something to snack on while you eat.

It's a basic food category, with it's own Korean word: anju 안주 按酒 'food to accompany alcohol'. It doesn't really translate well into English, as you can see on this bilingual sign at the supermarket:

The item after the slash is anju: see the "안주"? "Nuts" is pretty much the best they could do in English.

A lot of restaurants have a special anju section on their menu. Here are two of them from places we've been to for lunch; in the evenings they become drinking joints.

The entire right side is anju (except for the three kinds of drinks listed inside the oval). One of the items listed is right-eyed flounder sashimi.

There are three anju on this menu, at the lower left (seasoned snails, bulgogi, and seafood scallion pancake). The alcohol is on the lower right.

It's no accident that the dried fish and seasoned dried fish are in the same aisle as anju in the supermarket shown above. Dried fish and squid are among the most popular anju. I mentioned in this earlier post that dried anchovies make a good anju.

Here is a photo from a blog entry I posted in 2008.

It's a bit hard to see, but there is a little wooden rod running through the fish heads. I think that traditionally these fish would have been hung from the rod to dry in the wind. Note too the little round packet of hot pepper paste, for dipping.

Other good anju are fried foods, kimchi and tofu, and nuts.

Always setting out a little snack when you have a drink, whether out or at home, is a Korean cultural practice I heartily endorse.

Snail meal

That restaurant seen under construction in the last photo of this post opened last week. Here's that older photo again:

And here's the restaurant on opening day. As apparently required by custom, all windows are blocked up so there is no way to look inside. You just have to go in and hope for the best.

The name of the place is Ureongi Ssambap Jip 우렁이 쌈밥집 'Snail Wrapped-Rice House". Ureongi is a kind of freshwater snail. Wrapped-rice refers to the serving of a plate of greens with a meal, so that you can wrap up the food and eat it like a roll.

Many restaurants are decorated with images of the 15th-century text promulgating the Korean alphabet. The walls of this restaurant were covered with this repeating pattern:

Apparently from 훈민정음언해본, though I'm not entirely sure ....

Below is the menu, quite simple. Basically, you can get an $8 set meal of snail with fermented beans, steamed egg with seafood, and fried pork; or, you can get a $10 set meal which substitutes vinegar-seasoned snails for the pork. (The other items on the menu are alcohol and food to accompany alcohol -- another topic for a future post.)

The note at the bottom left says that the pork is sourced from the United States.

Here's Erma with our meal. That's the wrapping greens on the right. The covered metal bowls hold our rice. On the left is a broth made of burnt-rice dregs. (It's better than it sounds.)

Fried pork on the left, steamed egg on the right. Arrayed around them are some side dishes, counter-clockwise from top right: shredded radish, flowered tofu, spicy sweet fried anchovies, kimchi, mushrooms.

Snails in fermented bean paste.

The snails were delicious but salty. We were advised by our server to dump a bunch of rice in and mix it up together before eating. It was good advice.

Because we'd visited the construction site with Tek many times, and he had met and charmed the owner, she recognized us when we came in, and give us a gift when we left.

"Thanks for You"

It's a towel.

"CARVEN Paris". The name of the restaurant is stamped at the bottom.

Neko Jjang

Today Erma and I stumbled across this place at lunchtime.

Neko Jjang 네코짱, i.e. Neko-chan ねこちゃん, i.e. Kitty

It's a Japanese ramen place. The inside was decorated with all sorts of Japanese-y tchotchkes.

Yes, the official term is "Japanese-y tchotchkes".

 So we got us some ramen.

This is tantan 탄탄 ramen. I honestly have no idea if this is supposed to be tan-men タンメン or tantan-men 坦々麺.

This being Korea, one must have kimchi with one's ramen. And danmuji (though I suppose I should call it takuan in this context).

kimchi (top) and danmuji 단무지 (sweet pickled daikon) (bottom)

The romanization of the Korean name of the restaurant hurt our eyes and our brains.

If ever there was a need for an interrobang, this is it: NeCoZzanG ‽‽

Take-out

This is how take-out works in Korea:

You order your food. (In the old days—i.e. more than 5 years ago—you would have had to provide directions to your place, using only landmarks. Nowadays there are actual street addresses.)

A delivery person zooms over on a motorbike, running red lights, driving the wrong way down one-way streets, and zooming up onto sidewalks without warning. The motorbike contains a big metal case inside of which is your hot food.

A motorbike food delivery case. (If you are in Gyeongju and want samgyetang, please call the number shown.)

Said person, usually having arrived without killing anybody, keeps shoes on in the foyer, puts knees on clean inside floor, and slides food, utensils, and other objects into house. Then leaves.

The takeout includes real metal utensils and actual heavy, heat-retaining bowls.

Raw hot peppers, raw garlic, and raw onion, with a spicy dipping sauce, is a commonly seen side dish.

Yum, it's take-out samgyetang 산계탕 蔘鷄湯! (That's a classic ginseng chicken soup.)

The soup is tightly sealed with plastic wrap. Not a drop has spilled.

samgyetang close-up

After you are done eating, you collect all the non-disposable items—bowls, spoons, chopsticks—and leave them outside the front door. At some time in the middle of the night the delivery person will scoot by and collect them.
The second time we ordered take-out, the delivery guy didn't scoot all the food onto the floor. Instead, he left the entire metal case with us, so we got to see the inside. Shelves! Genius!

So that's how the magician does the trick!

This was much more convenient for us. We put all the dirty dishes back into the metal case, and had a lot less trouble carrying it downstairs to leave for pickup.

Everything old is new again (lunch edition)

With the change of seasons, some of the side dishes that come with the set meals at our regular lunch places are changing to take advantage of what is currently fresh in the markets.

Here's the lunch we ate today at Cheongha Hanjeongsik, followed by a photo of the first lunch we ate there back in January.

April 2015 meal at Cheongha Hanjeongsik 청하한정식

January 2015 meal at Cheongha Hanjeongsik 청하한정식

Both meals have flounder, fried eggs, cabbage kimchi, and gim 김 (seasoned seaweed). But the other dishes are different. Of particular interest was this new dish:

tot namul dubu muchim 톳나물 두부무침

The proprietor told us that it is called tot 톳, a kind of seaweed called hijiki in Japanese. Here it is dried, seasoned, and mixed with soft tofu.

Fancy fancy

Yesterday the principal of Tek's daycare invited me, Erma, and Erma's mother to lunch at one of the fanciest traditional restaurants in Gyeongju. We're not entirely sure why. "Probably networking," speculates Erma.

The restaurant, Yoseokgung 요석궁, is built in traditional style, with the private rooms arranged in a rectangle around an open central courtyard.

You can tell which rooms are occupied by looking for the shoes.

I'm coming in later than Erma and her mom. Where's our room?

Oh, there's Erma signaling to me.

Hi Erma! I see we're in the corner room.

When we arrived (before the principal), the table was already set with golden tableware and a few banchan 반찬 (side dishes). I like the way the plastic lid of the water bottle matches the color of the bowls.

I really love this golden tableware. I wish I owned a set.

Heated floors, soft elegant cushions.

The napkins have the name of the restaurant (요석궁) on them. They are pre-dampened. Cold and wet.

You would be sad if you put this on your lap.

Some of the banchan were completely ordinary, like these seasoned vegetables and cabbage kimchi.

But some were distinctive. This is a cube formed of fine, cloud-like tendrils of dried pollack.

foreground: dried pollack (bugeo 북어); background: seasoned ground squid (ojingeo sikhye 오징어식혜)

After all four of us were seated, the more substantial dishes started coming out.

In the large dishes from left to right: jellyfish, fish dumplings (on the white plate), bulgogi, fatty pork, and seafood scallion pancake.

This is galbi jjim 갈비찜 (stewed beef ribs), one of my favorite dishes.

Crab.

The crab (above) and the abalone (below) were apparently not part of the set meal we ordered, they were provided free. (The Koreans call this kind of complimentary item a "seobiseu 서비스", a borrowing of the English word service.)

Grilled abalone skewers.

Everything old is new again

We've only been living here for three months, and already we've seen an enormous amount of turnover of the businesses along the few blocks we walk every day. What impresses is not just the number of stores and buildings we've seen demolished and rebuilt, but the speed at which it happens.

This dog-soup restaurant that I photographed two months ago:

Yeongyang tang 영양탕, literally "nourishment soup", refers to soup made from dog meat.

has just been replaced with this dog-soup restaurant:

Bosin tang 보신탕, literally "rejuvenating soup", also refers to soup made from dog meat.

Those are grand opening decorations flanking the doorway.

The coffee shop next door to Tek's daycare was transformed into a hoe 회 (Korean sashimi) restaurant in a matter of days. Now the piano shop next to that restaurant is being demolished.

There are not the same kind of safety precautions here as in the States, for either workers or bystanders. One seldom sees construction workers with safety gear like helmets, ear protection, or goggles even when they are operating heavy, loud, dangerous equipment. The work often spills out into the street without regard for impact on traffic or pedestrians.

A block east of Tek's daycare a new building is going up. One day on our way home we stopped to watch a mini excavator digging a trench in the road in front, presumably for some kind of utility hook-up. Notice the total lack of signs, cones, or any accommodation for the two-way traffic and the pedestrians.

This is an active two-way street!

 Cars just squeezed by as best they could.

Occasionally this guy with a broom would step out into the street to make sure the cars didn't fall into the trench.

Two months ago I took a picture this storefront because something about the sign amused me (I don't even remember now what it was). It's a skin care place (there are a lot of these around).

It then closed, and we've been observing its transformation into a restaurant. Bringing Tek by after daycare to check on its progress has become part of our daily routine. The other day we overheard the restaurant owner, who is often on site supervising, refer to Tek as her "regular customer kid" on the phone.

They just got their new signs up today. But they haven't completely removed the old signage yet.

I don't know if all this demolition and construction and business turnover is just the way things always are here, or if the economy is entering a boom phase.

Fire burn and cauldron bubble

If you order a soup as your main dish at a Korean restaurant, it is likely to come to the table quite literally at a boil.

This is sundubu jjigae 순두부 찌개, soft tofu stew. It is served with a raw egg, which you crack into the boiling soup. You end up with a nice poached egg that you can search for later when you eat.

These pots are incredibly good insulators. The upside: soup stays really hot through your meal. The downside: soup stays too hot to eat for too long. It can be quite frustrating waiting for 5, 10 minutes before you can get any soup into you. One solution: you can ask for a small bowl into which you can ladle small amounts of soup at a time to cool down.

This particular bowl of soup is from a popular restaurant called Maetdol Sundubu 맷돌순두부 'Millstone Soft Tofu', near the Bomun Lake resort area in Gyeongju.

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.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

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.