Cooking food at your table, perhaps not up to health code, but really good
So another thing that Korea does really well is let you cook your own food. It's really ingenious. People come to your restaurant and instead of having to cook for them, you give them all the ingredients and they have to do all the work. Brilliant! Why didn't we think of this? Perhaps because I could possibly kill myself with the uncooked meat I am consuming, but no matter, it is really tasty and a great communal meal with friends.
We haven't snapped any photos of Korean BBQ, or galbi, so we'll have to post more on that later, and believe me, it deserves a post to itself. Recently, we discovered a new dish, whose name I can't remember, that entails a light broth cooked over a gas flame in the center of the table. You are given a platter of veggies and thinly slice meat to add to the soup, and when they are cooked to your liking, you eat from the pot. The really cool part though is still to come: around the outside of the pot is a cast iron circle on which more meat cooks. This meat you wrap up in rice paper wrappers with another platter of veggies and then dip in 4 tasty sauces. Amazing!
The second photo is of our friends Chris and Tony and gives you a good view of the pot and cast iron skillet-thing, as well as the arm of our waitress (as a side note--they are so helpful, partially because they think we are incompetent, so they do a lot for us rather than letting us stumble through it ourselves). In the first photo you can see Ryan, being a weirdo like always (don't worry, he hasn't changed), but more importantly, you can see the platter of veggies that go into the wraps with the meat, as well as a few little plates just behind that piled high with kimchi. Yum! (more about Kimchi in further posts)
The crazy part is that the meal didn't end there. After finishing the wraps and the soup, large udon noodles are poured into the remaining broth in the pot. When those are finished, a waitress empties the pot and makes a quick stir fry with egg, rice, and minced vegetables at your table. That's 4 meals all in one!
So who wants to come visit?
posted by beth and ryan @ 4:54 AM
4 Comments:
please pick me up at the American Airlines baggage area at Incheon International at around 7p tomorrow. and take me straight to a great restaurant. and please have a portable grill in the car so we can cook bulgolgi on the way to the great restaurant. thank you.
I don't know what's it's called in Korean (yet), but in Japan it's called shabu shabu (the cooking style so nice they named it twice). The Chinese do something similar with the hot pot, but I'm not sure either are usually as elaborate as your Korean experience. As for the grilling at the table thing, some Korean restaurants here in the states do encourage it. Chicago's Korean town has several restaurants I need to try!
Jjigae Chongol or just Chongol
Keep on eating! And telling us about it!
in my experience, fondue is a lot like this. the melting pot in sac (going out of business =/) was a great fondue restaurant. it's ridiculous because it costs an arm and a leg for you to cook your own meal, but it is so fun and lasts for hours!!! so, i'm glad the koreans know what's up. wish i could visit!! miss you madly. we got 17 at pub trivia tonight...a bit pathetic, but i think i answered about 10 questions myself, so i'm proud of that! :-) wish you were there. don't worry about the wedding...i think if we are going to DC we'll just do it really small and then do it big when we can get married in the church. love, me.
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