I met up with Barbara and Amy at 1:00pm yesterday at the Seoul Museum of Art.  Amy is a docent for the Chun Kyung-ja exhibition, and gives a guided tour in English at 1pm every Saturday and Sunday.

Including me, there were seven of us on the tour, which lasted about 20 minutes.

For those interested, tickets to the museum are only 700 won and the nearest subway station is City Hall.  There’s also an abstract art exhibition going on at the same time, which runs until August 23, 2008.

After Amy got off “work,” the three of us walked to Insa-dong for lunch.  We found a great hole-in-the-wall Korean restaurant tucked away in an alley.

The food was cheap, plentiful, and unpretentious (unlike other restaurants in Insa-dong).  My “soon duboo” was 4000 won and we all shared 9 side dishes including fish. It’s very easy to get to.  Directions: With Starbucks behind you, look across the street and to your left, and you’ll see an alley.  In the alley on your left hand side, you’ll see the restaurant.  Below is also the menu.

By this time, it was pouring down rain.  We hid out at The Coffee Bean and waited for the storm to pass.

After it did, we went looking for a movie to watch.  Of course, that was a bad idea.  It seems like everybody and their mother watches movies on the weekend and most things were sold out until much later in the evening.  Instead, we decided to look for a chicken and beer place.  After a few blocks of walking around Jongno 3-ga, we found Chicken Maru.  It was only 6000 won for each of us, and that included an order of chicken and 2000cc of beer.

I finally left around 8pm for Gunpo, where I was to met Courtney, who was having her birthday party in Sanbon.

Last weekend, we went with Reardon to a tapas restaurant, El Plato.  It’s located on the side street across from “Tea Purple” in Hongdae.  Phone #: 02-325-3515.  The sign on the door said, “Taste Amazing Spanish Food.”  We knew not to get our hopes up, but you know what?  The food was DELICIOUS!  The cooks even knew how to properly cook the tuna and beef steaks.  The three of us had all been to Spain, and were really impressed.  We even gave our compliments to the owner, Kim Chan-hyuk.  He told us he had sent his chefs to Spain for 3 months to study the food there before opening his restaurant.  The food was very good, but I will warn you, the prices were a little on the high side.  Authentic tapas are hard to come by in Korea, so you get what you pay for.  For example, my large glass of sangria was 9,000, the tuna steak was 7,900, and the chorizo was 5,300.  Click on the pictures to see more prices.

El Plato would be a once-in-awhile, treat yourself nice, kind of restaurant.  It’s definitely worth it, though.  The three of us almost spent 100,000 that night.  That included 6 glasses of house wine and 1 sangria.

Afterwards, we visited another bar on the same street.  Peering in, you could easily see people dipping their feet in the cool water.  We went in for at least one drink.

Reardon tried to get ME to chat up these Korean girls so he could then make a movie.  First of all, I can’t speak enough Korean to hit on Korean girls.  And second, I’m not your wing man!  The girl next to Reardon is cute though, isn’t she?

Yup, it’s time to go home.

I had a delicious dinner tonight!  Who knew there were so many restaurants in Reardon’s neighborhood?

This is the first time I’ve grilled chicken like this in Korea.  Usually at a restaurant, you grill pork or beef.  Chicken doesn’t seem to be a popular grilling meat.  Six chicken thighs were de-boned and marinated in a dakalbi-like web rub.  It was a little precarious cooking with the arc shaped grill, but the results were delicious.  The table next to us were eating “saam gyup saal” marinated in the same dakalbi sauce.

A couple days ago, Ras and I tore ourselves away long enough from the apartment to go downtown and have Chuncheon’s famous dakalbi (dakgalbi). Friends will know this is my favorite Korean food, and I don’t get a chance to eat it very often. The last time I had Chuncheon dakalbi was two and a half years ago when I visited this city with Kiran, Christa, and Glyn. Wow, it seems like forever ago. That was our summer trip, when we rode bikes around the lake, saw an area where the hugely popular Korean drama, “Winter Sonata” was filmed, went to a waterfall, and witnessed a birthday hazing downtown.

Dakalbi is chicken marinated in spicy pepper paste and cooked on a large hot plate (don’t know a better way to describe it) with cabbage, sweet potato pieces, and ddeok (Korean rice cake). That’s the simple recipe, but of course, you can also add more vegetables. We took a taxi downtown to Myeong-dong (same name as in Seoul) and told the taxi driver to take us to “dakalbi street.” He corrected Ras and said, “Oh, dakalbi alley?” If you happen to see the sign below, all the dakalbi restaurants are on a parallel side alley to this street, which happens to be a shopping street.

On the way there, I saw this New Orleans type building (above). It looked really out of place. Below is the restaurant I chose - Myung Mule Dakalbi. It seemed to be one of the three big restaurants located at a “Y” intersection. Their website is: www.dacgalbi.co.kr. (Warning: in Korean with annoying music)

The side dishes were really simple. Upon arrival at our table, we both ask, “This is it?” We received a small bowl of cold kimchi soup, pickled vegetables in a slightly sweet sauce, raw onions, extra chili paste, and a basket of lettuce to wrap the dakalbi in. The side dishes were simple because the star of the show was the secret recipe red pepper sauce, that the chicken was cooked in. The sauce was much better than at any dakalbi restaurant I’ve had in Seoul. Maybe you’re saying, “But it’s just red pepper paste. What’s the big difference?” Well, even though the sauce was crimson red, it wasn’t too spicy at all. It was never overpowering and complemented the sweet cooked cabbage, chewy ddeok, and sweet potatoes so nicely. I dare say, the sauce was PERFECT. Even Ras, who doesn’t like dakalbi that much, noticed the flavor, and said it was very good.

In addition to the boneless chicken in the dish, there was another option of “cheese dakalbi.” Ras and I were both wondering what that would consist of - maybe cheese ddeok? It was our lucky day, because the table next to us ordered that exact dish. Upon seeing what they received, I think it was a rip-off. For 3,500 won extra (per serving), they received a plate of shredded mozzarella cheese to put on top of their cooked dakalbi. Sure, maybe it was good. But 7,000 won more delicious? Hmm… If you look carefully at the picture below, the cheese is on top.

I would have eaten the last little bits, but was WAY too full.

For a dakalbi recipe you can make at home, check out My Korean Kitchen. It’s a great Korean food blog I found a couple days ago that has recipes for Korean food in English. I’m really excited to make many of the dishes she has listed.