Asia Report #1: Green Tea Donuts and Pork Katsu

The CLC has doing all the work on this blog, so I wanted to chime in with a quick update from Seoul.

The Listmaker and I are about to board a 7:40 train to head to an area on the Eastern Coast of Korea called Gyeong Ju. Yesterday, we had a green tea donut from Dunkin' Donuts as a snack in the train station while picking up our tickets. That donut was for you Jim Flood! Dan didn't like it as much as I did, as it had an interesting texture to it that didn't appeal to him but did to me. It was called a Chew-isty and it sure was! The donut had a lot of elasticity so I wonder if they use rice flour or something more glutinous than cake flour. Picture to come soon.

For dinner we hit this cute little place on a narrow street in Myeong-Dong where our hotel is located. The name of the restaurant translated into: The Place That Does Donkatsu Really Well! I had the western style pork katsu and Dan, the curry pork katsu. The portions were huge - like the size of a first baseman's glove. Again, picture TK. To begin with we were both served a mystery soup of pale yellow. It was probably potato with something else. Our katsu plates were adorned with a junior scoop of Korean health rice, radish kimchi, macaroni salad and sweet pickled radish. I know, it sounds like a strange combo, but I really enjoyed it and it was a nice bargain at 6500W (about 7USD). There was also a side of shredded cabbage with a green mayo based dressing for both of us to share as well. For drinks, we both ordered beer, in this case a ginormous bottle of Cass, wich I could barely finish.

Then we stumbled back to the hotel to try and adapt to the time change. We both woke up around 4AM this morning!

Time for breakfast!

Lest I forget, for lunch we took a cab to my relatives' place in the Banpo neighborhood of Seoul, right across the Han River. There about 11 of us gathered for a wonderfuly family meal of make your own bibimbop. One of our hosts, my cousin Do-Won, shared a story about how a Frenchie friend of his said bibimbop was a terrible food because everything is mixed together and you can't enjoy each ingredient on its own. Frenchie, you have no idea what you're talking about! Pre-bibimbop, we shared plates of potato jun as well as a salad made with mook (which is this gelatinous food with not much flavor, but acts as a base for other tastes) lettuce, cucmbers, carrots and chiffonaded perilla leaves. Tasty!