Skip to main content

Seoul Food

Lunch at Arirang Folk Restaurant

Any visit to Seoul easily turns into a food trip. 

As soon as we checked into our hotel at the Seoul Plaza, we were prowling the streets checking out the various restaurants in the neighborhood. And as it happened, we chose Arirang Restaurant for our first meal in Seoul. That was a great pick because we had a very good lunch at Arirang. I ordered the Korean style seafood pancake and it looked and tasted like it spent just the right amount of time in the pan. My brother cleaned up his bibimbap hot pot. The japchae was a rich mix of sweet potato noodles, stir fried vegetables and shredded beef. The black cod boiled down in soy sauce was the amazing reveal.  It was both flavorful and moist. It was the very first time in my life that I really appreciated cod. And the service was commendable.

Address: 23, Namdaemun-ro 7-gil, Jung-gu (behind the Westin Chosun Hotel)

Bibimbap
My favorite dish is bibimbap but I couldn't find bibimbap with chicken anywhere we went in Seoul. I wonder if this is just served in the U.S.? Most bibimbap dishes in Seoul are served with beef. I finally ordered one with beef and asked the waiter to tell the kitchen to hold off on the beef. It worked out! 

Directions to restaurant
Unfortunately, I dont have the English name of the restaurant. It's on the second floor of the building next to the Lotte Young Plaza and above a 7-eleven convenience store.

It's standard fare to be served ban chan when eating at a Korean restaurant. Sometimes there are two small dishes or five as we had at Arirang. Kimchi is a staple ban chan dish. There is usually a box of stainless steel chopsticks on the table. I just had to buy my own set of silver chopsticks for home. Such useful souvenirs!

Samgyetang
Samgyetang is ginseng chicken soup. We ordered this on a hot summer's day at a restaurant inside a hanok house in Jongno-gu. The soup was served in a hot pot with a whole boiled chicken. It was a lot to eat for one person but since we had been walking around Gyeongbuk Palace and Bukchon village all afternoon, we did justice to the big serving. I learned later from watching Maangchi on YouTube make samgyetang that ginseng energizes you. And I read somewhere that if you want to cool down, you need to drink hot tea. So eating hot soup must have the same effect. In fact, Koreans believe that you fight fire with fire or yi yeol, chi yeol and consequently, they eat samgyetang on the hottest summer days. 

Make your own samgyetang: http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/samgyetang

Shinsegae Food Hall
The Shinsegae Market Hall (in the Shinsegae Department Store) is a very busy place. I couldn't find a free table at any of its many restaurants. So I walked around in circles checking out its various departments. There's a bakery, cheese and deli, candy, tea and wine sections and a gourmet market along with its upscale restaurants. It's really a food destination on its own.

Myeong-dong has an incredible array of street fare. Besides hot dogs, I spied noodle stalls, bulgogi, fried prawns on a stick, fruits, egg buns, gimbak(looks like sushi), mochi, and chocolate covered strawberries. There's something here for every hungry belly.

Food for thought from Arirang Restaurant: "We cook in traditional ways, keeping the Korean tradition of regarding food as medicine in mind and serve with our whole heart as if we provided our elders with food." Jal meokkesseumnida! Bon appetit.



Food Stall in Myeong-dong 
*****

Images by TravelswithCharie

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Filipino Struggles in History - Carlos Botong Francisco

In 1968, Antonio Villegas (then Mayor of Manila), commissioned Carlos "Botong" Francisco to paint the history of Manila for Manila City Hall. The series of large scale paintings was called  Kasaysayan ng Maynila  (History of Manila).  The paintings deteriorated over time and no attempt was made to preserve these historical canvases until 2013 when Mayor Amado Lim sent them to the National Museum for extensive restoration. Four years later, in 2017, Mayor Joseph Ejercito Estrada and the Manila City Council signed an agreement with the National Museum to leave the paintings at the museum so they may reach a larger audience in exchange for museum grade reproductions to replace the originals. Kasaysayan ng Maynila was later renamed Filipino Struggles in History and is now on display at the Senate Hall of the National Museum . Carlos "Botong" Francisco died in March 1969, a few months after completing the paintings. He is one of the first Filipino modernists and

The Art of Carlos Botong Francisco - Progress of Medicine in the Philippines

Pre-colonial period Pag-unlad ng Panggagamot sa Pilipinas (The Progress of Medicine in the Philippines) is a group of four large-scale paintings depicting healing practices in the Philippines from pre-colonial times to the modern period. Carlos Botong Francisco was commissioned in 1953 by  Dr. Agerico Sison who was then the director of Philippine General Hospital (PGH) together with   Dr. Eduardo Quisumbing of the National Museum, Dr. Florentino Herrera, Jr. and Dr. Constantino Manahan. These oil on canvas paintings measure 2.92 meters in height and 2.76 meters in width (9.71 ft x 8.92 ft) and were displayed at the main entrance hall of PGH for over five decades. Owing to its location, the artworks were in a state of "severe deterioration" at the beginning of the 21st century from exposure to heat, humidity, dirt, dust, smoke, insect stains, grime, termites and an oxidized synthetic resin used in an earlier restoration. These canvases were restored three times, the last was

8 Heritage Houses of Iloilo

Lizares Mansion The province of Iloilo on the island of Panay has a rich trove of heritage houses, left over from the sugar industry boom in the 19th century. Iloilo also had the largest port in the Philippines at that time which facilitated the export of sugar to foreign shores and deposited money in the hands of the sugar barons. The barons dropped their earnings into the acquisition of properties in Negros and the construction of beautiful homes in Iloilo, many of which are located in the vicinity of the Jaro Cathedral. The Lizares Mansion was built in 1937 by Don Emiliano Lizares for his wife, Concepcion Gamboa and five children. The family fled to safety when World War II broke out and the house was occupied by the Japanese military. The family returned to the house after the war but left once again after the demise of Don Emiliano. It was sold to the Dominican order in the 1960s and was converted in 1978 to a private school, Angelicum School. The mansion now houses the