Hallyuwood Day: Chicken BBQ
Lunch is at another Korean restaurant that pretty much serves only one type of dish. Irene calls it as Korea’s version of chicken barbecue. We arrive at about 1 pm. Many tables are filled with diners, though Irene got us table reservations. I wouldn’t exactly call it a barbecue. What we saw are small cut chicken pieces, with cabbage and tteok (rice cake) on a black pan with stove underneath. Still uncooked, the stove is turned on after we took our seat. The tteok is different from the one we tasted in the kimchi factory. This one is long elongated and white. Actually, we thought it was pices of cuttlefish, particularly the tentacles, but there are no suctions throughout. I only figured out after we got back to Pinas and viewing Arirang TV.
Anyway, after the ingredients start getting cooked, the waiters/waitresses put in the rice. The chicken in our table are not covered in gochujang, the hot pepper sauce. There’s a bit of frustration in our table, since it takes a while to cook the chicken and we are not sure how to mix up the ingredients as they are being cooked. Anyways, once the food is okay to eat, we dig in. There is the purple lettuce we also had during yesterday’s lunch, so we instantly figure out what must be done. I think most everyone just ate from the pan to the small aluminum rice bowl. James and I ate with gusto - grabbing a lettuce, put some pieces of banchan and sauce, the main dish… yummy… I lost count of how many lettuce wraps we had. There’s not enough chicken around, so our guide asked the cook to stirfry the chicken and add to our pan.
We find out that the other half of our group seated at another table have been eating the spiced version. They described to us that it wasn’t so hot, but the spice added to the flavor. This made some of our half of the group commenting the blandness of the chicken. Still, James and I thought it was delicious. We understand Irene asked specifically to serve this chicken because she is concerned we can’t take the spiciness.
Another cool thing about this restaurant was that the softdrinks are refillable. Everybody had the softdrinks, except for the two of us. With food this good, who needs Coke? Around this time, we noticed that there are no more patrons and diners, but us. Non-descript restaurants here are rather like the carinderias of ‘Pinas. Anyone who wants cheap affordable eating come to eat for lunch, otherwise that’s it. The restos we’ve been to are relatively clean though. I know we ate a lot of wraps, but we don’t feel stuffed. That’s good.
Now that everybody’s been well-fed, it’s time to go to Dae Janggeum studio/park.
