But we have had some pretty good food here in Korea, and we'd like to share our culinary experiences with the rest of you, just in case you need a particular type, and are wondering where to go.
Flint and I both love ribs, and have a couple of excellent places to go for delicious savoury pork ribs. You can go to a western style restaurant like Outback or VIPS, and be perfectly satisfied, but the Korean offerings are just as good, if not better.
The first alternative, for take-out ribs, is the rib truck. This is a Bongo-type vehicle fitted out with a wood-fueled rotisserie where the owners cook up ribs and sam gyup sal. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.
I don't know what kind of wood they use (Flint?), but it gives the meat a particular flavour that keeps us coming back for more. I remember having to wait for some ribs to finish cooking once, and the owners invited me to sit in the back of the truck next to the fire. My coat still has that smell...
For 10,000won you get a generous rack of ribs, some pickled onions, hot peppers, and a savoury sauce that compliments the ribs to perfection. The owner usually throws in a few slices of sam gyup sal as "service," but I usually pick up an order of that with the ribs (10,000won) anyway.
The rib truck we go to sets up next to the OK Mart in Gagyoung-dong in Cheongju every Tuesday.
There're also trucks that sell BBQ chicken, but the main focus of this article is ribs, so we'll go on to the second of our suppliers.
This is a restaurant called "Cho Shim," which is located in Habukdae just down the street from my con-apt. It's on the ground floor of a ship-shaped building known as "Casa Bianca." It's the landmark I always give to cab drivers when I'm wending my way home from a night on the town. Most of them know it.
The restaurant has an equal number of tables with chairs and floor seats. Flint and I don't do floor seating, so we usually get a table next to the grill where they pre-cook the ribs.
My mouth is watering again.
Each table has a grill in the middle, so the patrons get to finish cooking the ribs for themselves. The ribs come with the usual multitude of side dishes, and especially a bowl of sweet sauce for dipping the ribs. You prepare the sauce by adding sliced onions and (in my case) grilled garlic slices.
I also like to grill the kimchi and the few slices of pa-jon that come with the side dishes. I also get to eat the "salad" (coleslaw) as Flint is not particularly enamored.
Flint commandeers the tongs, and makes sure the ribs are cooked to a turn. Each patron is given a cotton glove to wear on one hand, which helps protect against burns from the fresh, hot-off-the-grill ribs.
The set-up is fairly simple, like most Korean restaurants. You go in, order what you want, and are cooking it at your table within five minutes. There's not much else to it, besides the enjoyment of a very good meal.
The staff at this restaurant has come to know us, and the boss man even speaks good English. We sometimes see each other when he comes out for a smoke, and we are sitting on the benches, enjoying a good cigar and shamelessly ogling all the Korean hotties out on the street.
After a good long feed of ribs, there's nothing like a good cigar along with some scotch or rummmmmmmmm.
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