Seoul 12-16 Sep 2008 (Part 2)

Day 2 Sep 14 - Lunch (Beef hotplate, beef soup and mortar rice)

Of course, we didn't wake up till past noon after such a fulfilling night out. Anyway, by the time we were all ready it was lunch time. Time for something nutritious and soupy...

"Modeum  suyuk chongol" - mixed meat hotplate; Besides slices of lean beef meat, it comes with some ribs, tendon, tongue boiled with mushrooms, green pepper, some vegetable that looks like spinach in some delicious beef broth. This was accompanied by beef soup with rice cooked in a mortar  "tolsot seolleongtang". The rice is really cooked on the mortar... so, you have to scrap the rice from the mortar and add into the soup, which already comes with meat, vermicelli, peanuts... add a bit of salt and pepper and you are all set. The most interesting part was... after scraping off the rice, quickly pour some cold water into the mortar... what's left of the rice or crust will be "dessert"... unfortunately, I was a bit slow on the water pouring, so my rice was a bit burnt.

   

When I was leaving the restaurant, I managed a glimpse of the kitchen... wow... no wonder the soup was so tasty. They basically had a whole cow in the cauldron... just kidding. You can see the bones all stacked up on the big wok... hmmm maybe the amount of bones could make up a whole cow. Look at the picture taken from outside, not very clear but you can kind of make it out. 

 

Day 2 Sep 14, Dinner - Cold Noodle

Yum yum... I love cold noodle. This place apparently is more famous for its hot noodle but I thought the cold noodle tasted great too. I don't remember cold noodle being powdered with so much sesame seed the last time I had it but it does add to the flavor though. My friend had the dry version which is basically buckwheat noodle with spicy sauce... I had a taste and kind of regretted not ordering the dry cold noodle. It was very tasty. Anyway, it may be too spicy for me. Even the locals were sweating... I would be drenched, I guess. ; )

After dinner, we went for drinks at a karaoke pub... first pub, I think we had about 15 bottles of beer. It's a norm to serve 5 bottles at a time. Quite similar to Taipei, some places serves half a dozen big ones each time. We waited till around 1 am before we went to a dance club. It was too crowded. We didn't stay very long because we were off to catch a show at Trance, a cross-dresser show which I found extremely high quality and entertaining despite not understanding korean. After the show, we stayed on for awhile more for some drinks before adjourning back to the karaoke for drinks. We drank and sang and we drank and sang... by the time we left the pub, it was 7:30am. Wow... time for breakfast!!!