On Saturday night, the day after my birthday, Bravo took me to this really cool restaurant about an hour away, called Suraon. It's a place to go when you're celebrating, as I could tell by the various party rooms and random celebrations going on. There was a giant picture of a baby in one room, and a large group of business men in another. The waitress put us right next to the stage, which was pretty cool. Everyone was dressed in traditional Korean garb and a full band of Korean instruments played on the stage. At this restaurant, you pick from a set menu of traditional, royal Korean food. Bravo picked for us, but we really couldn't tell what anything was. It was a 14 course meal of complete craziness. This has to be the strangest dinner I have ever had (if you don't count my first thanksgiving I cooked). I wanted to show the foods in order of what we had, but it's just too hard to do with this website. Sorry all.
This was actually served last. A small bowl of cold watermelon tea. Tasted like candy :)
This was dessert. Fresh fruit with cute little forks, because who doesn't love little forks.
This packaging may look scary, but inside the cabbage leaf is rice and red bean mixed together. Pretty tasty.
This may not look appetizing, but this was one of my favorite parts of dinner. It was some sort of rice porridge. There were little bits of fish cake in it. I recommend it.
And we all know how much Korean's love their kimchi. We were served so many different kinds of kimchi that I lost count. This one was exceptionally sour, which I like.
One of the first main courses, this is some baby squid and sea stag horn. Don't ask me what a sea stag horn is, I thought it was a potato. I was wrong.
Finally, REAL MEAT. I'm not sure how this was Korean. It said the beef was from Australia... but anyways, beef ribs.
Here we have some sashimi of 2 different kinds of fish. I can't really say what kind, however. The menu just said assorted raw fish. It was soaked in a mandarin sauce and had these little speckles of something that tasted like fire. hot hot hot. but good.
Here is some more sashimi. One was soft, one was chewy, and then there was some squid, which is always chewy.
This was Bravo's favorite dish. There were 7 delicacies and rolled rice cake to wrap it in. Some were vegetable, some were fish. Either way, it was awesome.
This was one of the strangest things to eat. It was a fiji pear cut into a bowl shape. Sounds delicious, right? Well then way to ruin it Korea. They soaked it in Kimchi juice. For those of you who don't know what kimchi is, it's a formented cabbage in spicy sauce. Yeah, not pear compatible.
This is some more porridge and another strange fruit/kimchi side dish.
This was my least favorite thing on the menu. The bowl on the right smelled like boondegi, a roasted silk worm street food that people sometimes eat. The smell haunts me for blocks.
The next was a side salad that had some sort of dressing on it that tasted straight up like grape kool-aid.
All and all, they were both very different.
Mmm these were awesome. The little yellow cakes on the left were fish and egg. The green was sea weed and rice. The pink was just rice cake. The dipping sauce was a bit like soy and was delicious.
This was citrus kimchi. It kind of looks like fish, but it's not. Just some more crazy kimchi. It was a really strong flavor. Hello, Kimchi!
And this was our first dish. They were Korean style spring rolls, filled with veggies, wrapped in wheat rice cake. The little flowers were even filled with veggies and made of rice cake. Very pretty and of course it tasted good.
So overall, it was an interesting dinner. I don't mean to seem so harsh on the food. It wasn't bad, it was just different. It was a great way to see some older traditional Korean food. The entertainment was also fun to see, which I will post pictures of soon. I've hit my picture limit for this post. Thanks again to Bravo for taking me here. It was a great present :) I'm sure he enjoyed the many faces I made.
Cheers :)
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