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.

Cherry blossoms in Gyeongju

Gyeongju is famous for its cherry blossoms (among other things). This week the blossoms are in full bloom. There are a few places that are particularly good for viewing cherry blossoms, like this location near the resort area called Bomun 보문 Lake.

These are called suyang beotnamu 수양 벚나무 'weeping cherry trees' in Korean.

Although spring has arrived, the warm weather suddenly turned cold and gray the day Erma and I were here.

Some of the loveliest stretches of blossoms are found in the neat rows of cherry trees planted along the riverbanks. This week, along one stretch of Heungmu 흥무 Road near the Seocheon 서천 Bridge, a long row of white tents has been set up along the wide grassy divider between the two directions of travel, catering to the tourists and residents strolling under the canopy of blossoms.

Cherry blossom viewing on Friday, April 3 on the sidewalk divider on Heungmu 흥무 Road (looking north).

Looking south. The far left lane of "traffic" is actually a bunch of parked cars.

Each side of the road is a two-lane highway. This being Korea, people simply parked in the right-hand lane wherever they felt like it, clogging up traffic and creating hazards for pedestrians. (In a future blog post, I will rant extensively about the parking culture here.)

We had a nice family outing at the end of the day on Friday, although the weather was chilly.

Tek with his grandmother looking on.

 Many traditional Korean street-stall snacks were available, as well as some innovative foods.

The round things in front are pressed dried fish jerky called jwipo 쥐포, made from filefish. Behind it are various kinds of dried fish and squid snacks.

In the foreground are waffles (wapeul 와플), served with whipped cream. Behind them are one of my favorite snacks, hotteok 호떡, made of dough fried with just a touch of slightly sweet honey-cinnamon filling.

In the back left are a very traditional snack, roasted silkworm larvae. Front left are something I'd never seen before: deep-fried hot dogs surrounded by a bread coating studded with french fries. The drinks run the gamut from Mountain Dew to corn silk tea (oksusu suyeom cha 옥수수수염차).

We had a number of snacks, including roasted chestnuts, grilled chicken skewers in teriyaki sauce, and a crazy-looking spiral potato snack that was nearly as tall as Tek.

These were delicious. Each one looked like it was made from a single potato which had been stretched into a DNA helix.

We then had a full dinner (including soju in tiny paper cups) inside one of the larger tents, which was furnished with tables and chairs.

Erma in the tent where we ate dinner, next to our "napkins".

When night fell, colored rectangular lights set into the curbs came on, lighting the cherry blossoms from below.

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.

Demolition by ladder

Do they do this in the States? Maybe, but I've never seen it.

(Apologies for the low video quality. Blogger doesn't allow video files of more than 100MB, astonishingly. Watch a high-quality version on vimeo [password required: korea].)

Later in the day, we hiked up a mountain on the opposite side of the Hyeongsan River. I took a highly zoomed photograph of our apartment complex, and was pleased to see that the ladder was still there, barely visible.

Mom Zone

Let't talk Korean-English bilingual punning.

This is a photo of the hospital that we took Tek to back in January, when he had a really bad illness and we were worried it might be flu. (Because we didn't have any Korean medical insurance at that time, we had to pay the full cost of the doctor's visit: about $15.)

There is a pediatric clinic on the first floor, but the hospital primarily specializes in ob/gyn. The English name of the hospital appears in the koala bear logo at the top, as transcribed in the photo caption:

It says: MOM ZONE WOMEN'S HOSPITAL

The Korean name of the hospital is: Mam Jon Yeoseong Byeongwon. The first two syllables (pronounced "Mahm Jone") sound very close to English "Mom Zone".* The rest of it is "Women's Hospital" (여성병원 女性病院). So the Korean name would seem to be just a borrowing from English: Mom Zone Women's Hospital.

But wait! I am told that Mam Jon 맘존 is also a common, playful contraction of Ma-eum Jo-eun 마음 좋은, which means "kind-hearted".** So setting aside the similarity to English "Mom Zone", in Korean the hospital name means something like "Kind-Hearted Women's Hospital".

That's a pretty sophisticated bilingual pun.


* Korean has no "z" sound. The closest sound is "j". Koreans do not perceive a difference.
** Corrected from earlier.