The Birthday Dinner: Take 2

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 :)

Turning 25..Korea Style

For my birthday (November 20th), a group of friends and I went out for some din-din and drinks, which then led to Beer O'clock, a local bar. All the bars here have really cheesy American names, it's a bit ridiculous. But anyways, we went there, shots were had, and then we decided to hit up a club in Hongdae, a more western part of Seoul. We ended up at a club called FF and I swear it was the best bar/club I've been to since coming to this country. It reminded me very much so of Chicago. A whole bunch of sweaty, too-cool for school kids dancing like they were keeping the dream alive. We sang, we danced, we drank nasty drinks. I knew it was time to call it a night when my friend James comes up and asks "Hey, this guy wants to put lipstick on me. Should I let him?" I quickly told him no and decided 4am was good enough. I headed home, richer in life, richer in blackmail, and much richer in cake (never a bad thing).

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Something Smells Fishy....

And it ain't you. Or is it? No, it's not. It's the thousands of crabs, claws, fins, and flounder being sauted and sashimied to your liking at the Noryangjin Fish Market! Hope you're not squeamish, because if you are, then you won't take well to the fish being killed by the old fashion/medieval method (aka: board with nails meets fish face). We'd been meaning to come to this place sooner. I'm a fan of fresh sea food and this is as fresh as it gets. There were hundreds of vendors and God did you know it. It smelled like...well, a lot of sea fare. There were fish from all waters, sting ray, squid, little crab, big ass crab, sea urchins, and a whole lot of other stuff I'd rather not know exist where I vacation. You can pick a fish from a tank and the shop owner will kill it and prepare it for you, to your liking. Well...when in Korea.... So we picked a small restaurant and dined on fried fish and blue crab soup. The fish was tasty. The soup...well, I always get the mouths and eyes, so let's just say nothing has changed. Enjoy the photos :)

This is one of the workers chopping off a fish's head, and with a smile!

This is/was dinner.

A lovely assortment of goodies...

Korean Historical Art Work

These are some of my favorite paintings from the Korean Historical Museum.

This painting really caught my attention. This artist is really famous when it comes to capturing the mountains in Korea. To me it looks like a big, scary, ominous mountain...but I like it.

This is a drawing of Buddha. It shows him sitting in the mountains, which symbolize peace and power. The picture is bad but the drawing itself was probably my favorite.

This picture was kind of a surprise to see. Most of the Korean art I saw steered pretty clear from realism. The colors in the portrait were still so vibrant and the face on the girl made me think that this must be what all the Koreans looked like before plastic surgery...haha. Anyways, a beautiful portrait.

Korean History Museum

So I'll spare you the my abstract views on art...but I will show you some great pieces I saw at the Korean History Museum. What pictures you WON'T see, are what happened AFTER the day at the museum. For some reason, every time James, Bravo, and I go out to explore the city, we always find ourselves in the wrong part of town. This means hookers and trannies. I think these were predetermined destinations...ha, I'm kidding Mom.

I loved these shrines to Buddha. I also learned that every Buddha statue shows a different hand sign and they all mean different things. Buddha sign language. Think limited but limitless. Ohhhh snap.
These 2 pictures above are of a pagoda. It was 13 eaves tall I believe. It was very old and if I wasn't using my camera phone to take photos, you would see the extra detail in the carvings. Pagoda's are common in a lot of Asian countries. They're usually close to temples. This one was moved indoors for historical purposes. Duh.

The little things.....

Sometimes I'll pass a food stand or be browsing the mini-stop and see something that makes me giddy inside. Like Hershey's Chocolate "Drink". First of all, it tastes like goodness. Second of all, I can read it. It's the little things... don't mind the zombie stare, I hate pictures.

I'm An Intellectual....?

So, awhile back, Bravo and I went to the Korean War Memorial. Outside, they have all different kinds of tanks, helicopters, planes, and some ships as well. I was dragged around to many a war memorial as a child, so seeing these kind of made me groan. The statues and architecture were really breath taking. There are walls upon walls of names. It's always an eye opener how much a war impacts life when you see them all in type, staring back at you. One famous statue that I liked was the statue of the 2 brothers. They were fighting on opposites sides of the Korean War and found eachother on the field. It's a huge statue and beautiful.

The other tributes inside were interesting as well. There is a reflection pond and my favorite, the tear drop made from army tags. The pictures won't do anything justice, but this war memorial was definitely worth the subway trip.

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"Nothing is worth more than this day" - Goethe