Happy Valentine’s Day

Here sits a biscuit

Pies-n-thighs says: “I love you”

A Flour-y heart

Southern Charm

The South (capital s included) does something strange to you. I lived there for the first two years of my life, and more recently the four years of college. I didn’t come back north of the Mason Dixon line often, so I can say that I lived down there. More often than not, I’d take my vacations in Savannah or Charleston, sometimes Atlanta, and one summer: all over the South. And as a result, I have this strange affinity for Southern things. I have this strange pride for Southern fare, be that food or houses or the draw; there is something that the South can do to you to make you fall in love.

As tried and true readers might know, I also have an affinity for cooking people lots of food. Sometimes it is lots of people lots of food, like last Sunday. I sent out an email around Thursday saying “I have a ton of food. I want to cook it. Come over and eat it. Bring nothing but yourself, hunger, and maybe a friend.” After a few responses, and knowledge that it wasn’t just going to be me and my roommate taking down a feast of food, I started to devise a plan.

The first ingredients that I looked at, which in turn shaped my entire menu, were collard greens. These leathery, huge, elephant ear-like greens are a staple in my southern diet. Anytime I see them on the menu, I get them. With bacon, or without. With maple syrup or without. Slow-cooked for about twelve hours so that they are best eaten with a spoon or only blanched and in that case, a knife would be honorable.

After that, my CSA veggies fell into place. Collards with Brooklyn cured ham. Cornbread biscuits with buttermilk. Mashed potatoes with a half pound of butter, and a half pound of cheddar cheese. A spinach salad with orange surpremes and braised balsamic onions.  Mustard roasted Squash and carrots so that they were soft, mushy, and freaking delectable. Coleslaw made of cabbage, celery root, and golden beets. Lentil soup with kale and parsnips (prepared like split pea soup). And for those brave enough to trudge on through another course, or those simply holding the idea that there must be a dessert as truth: banana cream pie.

 

The meal started at 8:15 and ended three hours later with a bottle of wine or three, courses and talk of New York and the South and all the meanwhile, sitting at the head of the table, I felt I had provided for my friends, just as any good Southern Family would. They traveled to me, so I fed them. It’s simply southern, in a third story Brooklyn apartment.

How Perfect

It seems ironic — to a large degree — that I would be writing about a near perfect day, seeing as yesterday was anything but perfect. But the good days have to come with the bad, and there are some days that work out perfectly. Or almost perfectly, seeing as perfection is all but attainable.

Start: a wake up call from the rising sun through my window to which I see crisp blue skies and a few birds flying by. Note: yes this day is going to sound over the top with details such as “a few birds flying by” and yes, they are all true. Note: I didn’t prepare for such a perfect day so the pictures are limited. Enjoy the words.

Finding a cup of coffee already made out in my kitchen, I strapped on my running gear and headed out into the beautiful Brooklyn day for a seven mile run around neighborhoods and through Prospect Park, which was comfortably full of runners, joggers, walkers, talkers, bikers, players, loungers, and horses. Pause.

Restart: A nice shower and a clean room at my fingertips, I headed out with my roomie to find my new guilty pleasure at the little local coffee shop on the border of Bedstuy and Clinton Hill: a chai latte with a shot of espresso. Dirty Chai, she called out and I laughed at the name, and ordered one for myself.

The uncapped chai-coffee lasted maybe two blocks on our walk to a mecca of relaxation deep into Bedstuy: a closed spa (50 dollars for an hour long massage ain’t nothing to sneeze at), hair salon, café/brunch spot, and a Candela store. Perfection.

We didn’t tend to our appearances, rather we ate brunch at this café which was named none other than the “Biggie Bedstuy Brunch.” Belgium waffle, turkey bacon, cheesy eggs, maple syrup, two coffees. We listened to good music and talked about new neighborhoods to which to move. I laughed too loud a few times and made the counter person look my way. After a delicious brunch, and buying a piece of their carrot cake (which was about three pounds of cake) for the later times, we headed out and I met up with a dear friend to walk around Park Slope and find a place to sit and talk and catch up and plan and.

We tried a few coffee shops but, anywhere and everywhere in Park Slope is nonstop laptop-ville. Honestly we walked into three places only to find twenty or thirty people with twenty or thirty computers, staring, listening to music, “working.”

On ward ho! We made it to café Grumpy in Park Slope which does a delicious pour over and a wonderful Flat White (like a cappuccino or cortado but less milk and more foam).  Note: carrot cake still in hand.

Two hours later, after telling stories and the like, I had to book it back to Fort Greene to set up a CSA distribution. Carrots and Parsnips and Beets and Celeriac and Rutabaga and Spinach and Onions and Garlic and Potatoes were on the menu this time. So for that, I sat at the bar, drank a glass of red wine and made little recipe cards. Soups! Next time, maybe some coconut milk kale. Note: carrot cake still in hand.

The distribution closed early, so I headed out to meet up with an infant weekly supper club with a friend from years ago. We had the hardest of times trying to figure out a place to go. Our conclusion? The Dutch in Soho. It’s delicious with an amazingly vibrant space.

We didn’t have any reservations, but we charged our way through to the bar and waited for a table. Only four sips into an amazing rum-bitters-orange drink were we being asked to sit in a corner table overlooking the whole bar area. Perfect.

The menu was unreal. Lauren and I tried to narrow it down, but really we could only take like three things off the menu. Instead, we decided to do two fried oyster sliders, one appetizer, two seconds, and…. Two desserts.

Note: Lauren and I aren’t what you would call big eaters at first glance. The waitress didn’t flinch and wished us luck. We drove through every bite.

Three hours after we sat down, and steak tartar with romaine, quail egg, olives, homemade Caesar, and short rib pot roast with golden turnips, stout and caraway and red wine reduction pan sauce, and beautiful halibut with yuzu butter sauce, tobiko, winter garden vegetables, and sour cream apple pie with walnut ice cream, and toffee cake with a grapefruit glaze that I want to recreate later, we reveled in the fact that we didn’t need reservations, and just had a symphony of flavors from drinks to oysters through to dessert to the fact that we had sat there long enough o have digested some of the food and not felt too full.

Hopping on the subway home after making sure that we were going to do that again next Monday, to make the day more perfect, I stumbled on the same car as my roommate. I wore her hat, and we told each other about the day and spoke too loudly and accumulated some stares and didn’t stop talking until we parted ways in our kitchen.

How. Perfect.

 

 

 

Making Whoopie

 When I was a kid. A kid younger than I am now, I remember loving the Game Show Network. For some reason, old game shows really made m happy, made me want to learn more, and kept me interested. Press Your Luck. The Newlywed Game. Ten thousand dollar Pyramid. The Match Game.  Password. Win Ben Stein’s Money. The Price is Right. Card Sharks. It’s all about using your mind and trying to win money and at the same time, make the audience laugh. I would sit on the couch, against my anxious desires to get up and run around and probably break things, and watch these adults laugh with each other as they surely made some snide culturally appropriate comment about sex or art or politics. It might have been the fact that I never knew exactly what they were referring to, or because all of the issues they were talking about in side commentary was never really relevant, but I loved getting sucked into that time period. I loved watching the muted colors dance across the screen and watching people winning seven hundred dollars and jumping up and down because they could buy a vacation for the family now! Or A NEW CAAAAR!

Each show had its own special catch phrase – Higher or lower for Card Sharks, Wammy for press your luck, and Whoopee for the Newlyweds. Even as a little kid, I always knew what they were meaning to say but couldn’t when they casually said “making whoopee.” What exactly was that? The only reference I had were whoopie pies – a Boston snack dessert sweet thing.  Go figure I was a food nerd from the start.

And now, with the pastry competition growing (see: cupcakes, macaroons are both huge and the next thing is soon to come out…) bakeries are trying to find that next fad. One of my favorite bakeries – Baked – based out of Charleston and Red Hook, Brooklyn, make the most delicious Whoopie pies. They make whoopie, not whoopee.

The history of whoopie pies is rooted in Boston, but now I associate it with summer snacks around four, when your blood sugar dips just enough for you want to take a nap. They are two cakey-cookies that act as wonder bread around a sweet filling (see: thick custard, icing, jam, what have you). Do you remember those Little Debbie oatmeal sandwich cookies that Paula Dean would love because they are maybe all butter? Yeah, that’s kind of like a whoopie pie.

Maybe it was inspiration from watching the Game Show Network over the holidays, or maybe it was my most recent trip to Baked in Red Hook, but I wanted to make my own. Banana cake-cookies with cream cheese frosting sitting plump in between the two sandwich layers.

With Sam Cooke and Otis Redding serenading me, taking me back to the 1960’s to really get into the feeling of the Newlywed Game, I took a banana bread recipe and tweaked it a bit to give more of a cake consistency and cooked them as cookies, dropping tablespoons of batter on a cookie sheet and baking at 350 for about ten minutes.

The results, accompanied by a smooth cream cheese frosting, were decadent, and indulgent. Much like sitting at home, on a rainy day, and watching episode after episode on the Game Show Network, hoping someone maybe blush and say “making whoopee.”

Starting To Get Warm

When I look back on last winter, I remember a tiger onesie that acted as my heat – seeing as my Korean-style warmed-floor heat was broken – biting cold that, one day, left me crumpled up in a ball along the Han River rocking back and forth hoping for blood to restore to its rightful place in my hands, coats that never kept me quite warm enough, and some delicious foods. Kimchi and soup and stews and lots of barbeque. I remember some pitchers of watered down beer and the first endeavors into what was higher-class Korean cooking. I also remember a little venture into Thailand to escape the cold.

This winter, Brooklyn has been so much the kinder with mild days in the 30s and 40s and sometimes 60s. Runs in shorts and long sleeved t-shirts and coffee outside and even wind breaker jackets all create a thread of a winter affected by global warming. I mean, come on, no one’s kidding here – it is real people.

Sure we’ve had a few snow flurries and nights have become cold enough that I don’t want to bike home because my bare hands touching a metal lever to use the breaks doesn’t sound like a wining combination. But on the whole, this winter has been tepid. Luke-warm. One that, to my warnings for friends from California of “It gets so cold that you don’t even want to go outside despite the shining blue skies,” has left me a liar.

Until, really, now. Now it is cold. Now it hurts to walk outside with a hand exposed to hold the cell phone to my ear. Now I bundle down into my hood and jacket and sip hot coffee to warm my insides. Now I crave hot chocolate and hot cheese. Now I want for movies under blankets. Now I am a bear and start to hibernate.

No more salads, either. When it gets this cold, I don’t want “fresh” per se. I want cooked and soothing. I want comfort food, but not in the Southern typical fried cheesy mess that comes out with chicken and mashed potatoes and collards and corn bread and some pumpkin pie. Well, I don’t want that kind of comfort food, always – that is. More, I want warmed breads with local fat-full butter and a steaming hot soup.

With my CSA share (yes, folks, CSAs happen in the winter too! And it’s not ALL beets!), I’ve been able to explore some pretty amazing soups to help me through the cold days and warm me up after a long run. They also are great for freezing and moving forward in life with. Together.

The most recent soup adventure I went on was guided by my work place’s amuse-bouche. Before you start on your main meal (be that just an entrée, or an appetizer, too), the chefs come out and give you a gift from the kitchen to excite your palate: an amuse-bouche. Often a soup and some hot potato croquets, the amuse-bouche is a wonderful surprise and generous offer from the chefs of your meal.

They’ve been doing some potato-leek or parsnip soups as of late, and that just sounds splendid on chilly days. Rooty, nutty, rich, earthy; sustenance.

With the muse of my workplace, and the box of root vegetables sitting in the refrigerator, I took to a 400 degree oven with about seven parsnips, four carrots, one acorn squash, one onion, five cloves of garlic, seven potatoes, olive oil from Italy, truffle salt, pepper, and forty minutes.

On the stove’s top sat sixteen ounces of vegetable stock, ten ounces of water, two browned cloves of garlic, peanut oil, and sesame oil, with touches of salt and pepper. Simple seasonings, for simple goodness. Cliché? Sorry.

After forty minutes, the veggies (turned once during their stay in the warm oven) hopped into the veggie stock, and sat for another twenty minutes.

Armed with my masher (no immersion blender, yet!), I mashed my way through the squash, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, onions, and garlic. A quick staycation in a blender with the help of about a quarter-cup of water per three cups of soup, made this soup a pureed dream.

Now, after only about an hour and fifteen, sits nearly ten cups of silky smooth, nutty (see: parsnips!), earthy (see: truffle salt!), slightly sweet (see: parsnips! Carrots! Squash!), umami based (see: sesame oil! Peanut oil!) soup with depth and a subtle burst of flavor.

In front of my third story window, looking out over the bare trees and setting sun’s light on the brownstones across the way, next to a window that lets just a small amount of fresh crisp frigid air in, I topped my steam-dancing soup with some parmesan and pepper and felt fully warm and content during the depths of winter.

The Day After

What to do, the day after filling your belly to Santa-like proportions?

One: sleep in.

Two: Pack up the car and head north with your family.

Three: Watch the sunset.

Four: Eat leftovers. Leftovers!

Five: Play in the snow.

Six: Take it all in.

Seven: Go antiquing.

Eight: explore something new.

Nine: Try not to think about how much you ate yesterday and enjoy your LEFTOVERS!

Ten: Remember that there’s still some time of vacation left.

 

The Thanksgiving Sandwich (Tried and true and people been doing this for forever)

Squishy bread (no artisanal stuff here, folks)

Mayo (duh, my god, duh)

Cranberry Sauce ( see: 4 cups of cranberries, ¾ cup sugar, 1 cup water, ¼ cup honey, 1 orange’s zest, ½ tsp cloves, 1 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp cardamom – Bring water to a boil, add cranberries, let them pop (about 10 minutes), reduce heat, add all that stuff, cook for another 7 minutes)

Turkey (white meat! Yum!)

Collards

Stuffing (moist. Delicious. Meaty.)

Brussels Sprouts (four halves work well)

Pepper. Pepper. Black Ground Pepper all over that sandwich!

Spinach or Arugula (if you want to get all healthy, cause that’s what Thanksgiving is about…)

Do not toast it. Leave it cold. Eat it before lunch the next morning. It’s a Brunch time fiesta. Then go outside and play with your family or friends or whomever makes you happiest.

Ps. Yes, I think this will show up somewhere in an official kitchen I happen to be a part of…

Thanksgiving: The Day Cooks Love (Or Fear)

Text: “How was your fantastic food holiday”

Message: “I’ve been waiting for your post.”

Question: “So, what’d you eat on Thanksgiving?”

It might be just the American thing to do: ask about that holiday where we gorge ourselves and delight and laugh at the fullness we feel, let alone and sometimes separate from the satiation that is ubiquitous throughout homes warmed by ovens cooking turkey at 350 for 3-6 hours. Or, it might be the fact that I think about, talk about, write about, take pictures of food twentyfourseven. Whatever.

To answer those questions: My fantastic food holiday was splendid. It was wonderful and full of family (not all of my family, unfortunately, since we’re all spread out across the country trying to take over, but of course!) and friends and going to the grocery store and stocking up, and writing down lists and trying to time the cooking procedures just right and working well with Nancy in the kitchen and the oven not working the night before and making ice cream that might not be ice cream rather just frozen milk fats surrounding brandy… it was ridiculous.

Thanksgiving is such a strange holiday for me. It’s one of those days that I feel drawn to the home so that I can really flex my culinary muscles – it’s a day that centers around my passion, so why wouldn’t I love every second of it? I get to go to the grocery store, fight through the hoards of people in line for a turkey, go to the wine shop to pick out a nice red to couple well with those few sides that people may or may not focus on, then come home, blast the oven, turn on the open flame, and zone out to the sizzling, whispering, steaming food in front of me.

It’s also the holiday that I feel most comfortable being away from home, strangely enough. In the past 8 years, I’ve spent 4 of them abroad or away from the home. It’s a nice challenge, it’s a nice reminder of home, when it’s so far away.

But this year. THIS year. This YEAR! I’m home. I’m on the path to turning my kitchen official. I’m making money so that I can splurge on that nice cheese to make the squash casserole just that much deeper, that much better. This year was great.

On the menu, dear readers all anxiously awaiting:

Turkey Prepared according to Saveur’s recommendation (including letting the bird sit in the refrigerator for two days, to “dry out” the skin to create oh-so-moist meat)

Grandma Slappin’ Good Stuffing (non-vegetarian, folks)

Homemade, not-so-bitter Cranberry Sauce

Butternut Squash Bake (or casserole, whatever nomenclature you prefer)

Mashed Potatoes (mmm Half n’ Half abound!)

Not Slimey, Not Bitter, Not disgusting Collard Greens

Brussels Sprouts cooked in a Wok. Who knew?

Braised Carrots

Gravy (please pass the water glass, it’s that good)

No Biscuits… sad face emoticon

Rye Whiskey Ice Cream

Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust

Spicy Pumpkin Pie

Since the Recipes would take up another four pages, let me choose some of the favorites:

Nancy’s Stuffing:

It’s a secret, how annoying.

 

Collard Greens (that won’t make you run to the garbage)

In order of appearance

6 Strips of bacon

Cook these strips, cut in half, for about 5 minutes over medium-high heat

Olive Oil – a splash(ish)

2 big ol’ handfuls of Collards (they’ll cook down)

Salt  (to taste)

Pepper (enough so that you can see it on the collards)

1 package of chestnuts

1 White (or red) onion, chopped (or diced, whatever floats your life-vest)

Add all of this to the bacon, and let it cook together, over medium-low heat, for about 45 minutes. It won’t get too soggy, I promise (there’s no real liquid in there, remember)

Add a couple swigs of maple syrup 10 minutes before you’re done cooking the greens. More if you like them sweet, less if you like them not as sweet.

Total, the flame should be kissing the bottom of your cast iron (or other pan) for about an hour and five to an hour and ten minutes.

If you let them cool, and save some for tomorrow, then they’ll be even sweeter and more tender. Just sayin, they go quite nicely on a “next day sandwich.”

In A Moment Of Pause

To no explanation, I have recently taken some time off from this blog, yet again. It seems as though I go through phases with writing, my motivations behind posting, for whom does this blog continue, and general feelings towards blogs.

It has been over a year since I started, since I moved to Korea, since I learned how to move my way around a foreign subway system, since I talked about CSAs, since I made granola and called myself a neo-hippie, since I wrote about an American holiday abroad, and eaten another domestically (see: Thanksgiving) I’ve played around with cameras, settings, and writing modes. Prose, memoir, poetry, photo essays, it’s all been good. But it’s all been foundational. And what a time to reinvigorate food, but the holiday built around food: Turkey Day.

It’s time for another change. I realized this in my “real world” life – that is to say, I moved back from abroad, I’m working as full time as a food service person can, I have a goal with this whole food thing – and now it’s time to transcribe that over to the writing world. Change it up. Switch up the style. Overhaul. Make-over. Life change. Mid-life crisis?  Redux. Fresh. Crisp.

A week or two ago I sent out an email, to kick start the whole process. It read something like:

Hey. I’m thinking of moving across the country, again, and starting a restaurant with my brother. I have some ideas, but we all know that cooks, chefs, people who eat food, all fall into ruts when it comes to flavor combinations. What I’m asking you for are suggestions. Do you have a recipe, a flavor sensation, a dish you had on the road that one time when you were driving across the country, that one street vendor you ate at when you were abroad, that you just can’t get out of your head? Well send it my way in any shape or form, and I’m about to start cooking it. I’ll post the results on my blog – picture style. We’ll discuss. You’ll get it fo’ free every time you come into my place. Thanks, Josh.

With that email, I think I have over 50 recipes that I’m now about to tackle. I made myself a little check list on a found chalk board, and I’m about to get down to business: five recipes a week. At least. Maybe ten. It’s all about starting slow and getting wrapped up in it, right? Isn’t that what passion is? I have a good kitchen in the heart of Brooklyn, and I’m about to tear it up.  Supper parties. Food tasting. It’s what I’m putting forth, and hoping that people meet me in the middle somewhere.

So with that in my “real life,” how dos that transcribe, transition, translate to in this blog? I want this place now to be a memoir, a conglomeration, a mélange of stories of this construction of a menu, and a palate through the food. Not as many stories in prose, rather photo essays with the occasional bursting forth of anecdote in words if so necessary. Also, information about when I’ll be tasting foods, when I’ll be holding dinners, and most importantly: what’s going on in the local community that’s shaping the seasonal palate.

Where do you, dear reader, come in? Well you keep those eyes flickering across the page, across the photos I attempt to take with my stupid iPhone or my camera(s) (ps. I’m trying to get my film camera back in action, cross those scrolling fingers!). But the most important thing is to respond. Send me recipes. Tell me that that one dish you made yesterday looks down right awful, never make it or that hot damn I need that crème brulee immediately, how do I ship it to you? You are a part of building a restaurant’s menu. Now take those little hands and grab the bull so that you can help create a menu worth coming back to. Honestly.

Also: If you have places that you think I need  to go (see: “Oh my, on the upper east side there is a little muffin place that you HAVE to go to, it’s stupid good” or “In Virginia, I had the best biscuits I’ve ever had. Good god I can’t stop thinking of them” or even “In Italy, there’s a little town just outside of Florence that serves that only steak worth eating in the world. You must go.”

I must go.

 

When Description Prevails or Serving

To make time useful, satisfy a passion, and pay rent, my latest installment in living as a 20something is serving at a fine dining restaurant here in Brooklyn. I feel that, among other things, it is a nice way to complete and round out a 20something’s way of life: college eats, travel abroad, lounging in fields, eating random things that may not have an English translation, and working in the service industry.

Among other things (like teach), I feel that everyone should hold a restaurant job at least once in their life. It’s important to fully understand how much work it takes to keep people happy, full, and tipping well. I’ve worked in restaurants for a bunch of my life, actually. Well, to be clear: I’ve worked in the food world for a while. Busser, Bartender, Server, Caterer, Sous Chef, Manager, I’ve done a bunch of it (not to mention try my hand at a few recipes as well). And now, I’ve jumped back into the job with joy. Mainly because of the restaurant itself.

This place is an upstanding, upscale American cuisine place that does it up right. They take the seasons as cues for changes on the menu and go to the farmers market as much as possible. They listen to the customer to make sure that the food coming out is perfectly to the diner’s liking. They taste wines and keep their staff informed. And what I like most about it: I can talk to people about food for eight hours at a time. Ask me a question about artichokes, beets, duck, haddock, chicken, sweet potatoes, sunchokes, you name it I’ve got you covered.

And what this job really has enabled me to do is expand my verbal and not written capacity to describe food. So, on this day after a day of all ones (11.1.11) and a few days before that other day of all ones (11.11.11) – side note: is anyone weirded out by that or are there email chains going around about luck or non-luck if you don’t forward that onto seven people in the next three minutes? – I’m going to try something different: no pictures. Only words. Tell me if you get it.

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we have a plate full of vegetables and grains prepared five ways. First, we start off with a light salad of baby spinach and arugula, both light yet slightly bitter, topped with a sherry vinaigrette providing sweet notes to balance the subtle bite. This light salad is followed by couscous enlivened with rice wine vinegar, ginger, kosher salt, a touch of brown sugar, and extra virgin olive oil to give a hearty base to the green plate. Next, braised kale served with kosher salt, olive oil, to keep a thin flavor line between the couscous and kale, and braised Macoun apples giving it a deep, rich, dark green flavor brought out by the braise, yet autumnal and classic from the apple. Next, roasted sunchokes with olive oil and rosemary. The roasting brings out both the starch and sweetness from the sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem artichokes, and coupling that with rosemary provides for the perfect Fall dish. Finally, we have pan-sautéed Brussels sprouts with garlic, salt, a touch of maple syrup, and chopped fennel. This flavorful dish gives a hearty green – akin to a small leafy cabbage – some love with butter and garlic, some childishness with the natural sweetening from maple syrup, and a touch of elegance from the liquorish flavors bursting forth from the fennel taking this vegetable far from what mama used to tell us to eat. Together, we play on the sweet, savory, bitter sensations with a hint of sour nestling in the couscous and vinaigrette.  Please, enjoy.

What are you… Chicken?

I have this sinking feeling that I did not do my departure from Korea justice. If I can recall correctly, I simply gave one more recipe about bibimbap, then peaced out from that whole year of culinary, cultural, linguistic, social growth. It’s well past time – two months now back in the states – that I revisit Korea and its cuisine.

In a large way, my return to culinary Korea is based in my nostalgia. Now that fall is upon us, the last autumn I remember was full of hiking in a land where I read signs like a second grader and understood even less. I ate apples that I found in markets. I tried squash and kimchi almost every meal. Now, I’m sitting in a very comfortable coffee shop on the border of Clinton Hill and Bed-Stuy, sipping strong, delicious, cappuccino looking out into a rainy Wednesday with a large cooking day ahead of me, and a nice restaurant to play in until the wee hours. Is there a better scenario? Of course not – we learn from every day and every moment, but I’m just slightly nostalgic to the days where I ate spicy food out of necessity not out of choice, where I had to plan out what I’d say at the counter to order my coffee, where a run along the river attracted looks of “what is that crazy white boy doing?”, where grocery stores were a vocabulary exercise, where the food was out of control good and the homogeneity was diverse enough for me not to get through the whole cuisine in a year’s time.

One of the last, and best meals, my friend took me out to still haunts my memory in the best of ways. I’d love to tell the story in chronological order, but the food out was so good that I can’t wait.

We arrived in the pouring rain, threw our names up on the white board outside that listed the next tables available. There were five of us, and we’d love to sit on the floor – sure. Stripping wet boots and umbrellas from our immediate possession, we sat down and didn’t have to order, since this restaurant only offers one thing: the chicken with all of the accoutrement. See: kimchi, radishes, cucumbers, gochujeong, sujebi, buckwheat pajeon, and the chicken. The chicken is prepared by steaming it for hours on end with garlic and root spices, so the meat just falls of the bone with such flavor that it really will haunt your dreams for a while.

The sujebi, a perilla seed based-soup, had such intense, deep flavors that it could have been the stand out dish but nothing really comes close to the chicken. Perilla is a flavor akin to tahini, without the oil-factor. So picture this: a thick, gluttonous soup rich with pepper, sticky buckwheat noodle strips, all coated with the mild but deep flavor of tahini. Dunk your spoon in, and sink slowly into a comfortable satiated womb as you pick up another piece of chicken that will, if you’re not careful, fall from bone to plate atop your kimchi, next to the bowl of rice topped with a cut up cucumber with a touch of red-pepper-sweet-and-delicious-paste. Watch out, it’s all very dangerous, but what are you… chicken?

Now that the main stage has been filled by chicken, the journey there was hilarious. We all met up at exit two (I think?) off line three. It was raining. We all were prepared because, well, it had been raining for the past five weeks, so what was another day? This day, though, was a little more intense. Intense enough that the drains wouldn’t take any more sky water and as we tried to squeeze five people into one cab, we all got our socks damp and the cab driver wouldn’t even take us anywhere. For shame, sir.

Laura and I hopped into a different cab, and were eventually struck with the crude hard fact that our cab driver was not only deaf, but slightly blind, unaware of where he was, and ever so drunk. Driving up the mountain over to the northern side of Seoul, Laura and I realized that it might be a wild ride through the downpour. Stopping off to the side of the road twice, we had to harshly translate our final destination to him, pressing a cell phone to his ear so Jiyoung could really explain it, it was a meal that wasn’t just… easy. It was a struggle to get there, and as we exited from the car, Laura almost threw her shoe at the cab. It was so frustrating, but a perfect example of type two fun: not all that fun during it, but hilarious afterwards.

I wish I could debrief more on Korea, about how I miss it and how the people there are amazing. How I loved the food, and loved learning something everyday. How the clothes were cutting edge and how the mentality of hard-work was inspiring. How the kids there were just brilliant and how people really partied hard. How it was nice to relax with close friends and how it was comforting that I lived so far from what I knew. But, to put that in just one post, well that would be an insult.

Korea, I do miss thee.