Yesterday's bulgogi was about as authentic as it gets when it comes to street food, but Korean meals usually have several side dishes.
I got quite hungry while exploring the Seoul Zoo, so after completing my first loop of the park (it takes two - an inner loop and an outer loop - to see all the exhibits) I stopped off at the restaurant nearest the front of the park.
This is bulgogi served over rice, and it's just like it sounds. There are more vegetables to this one, and it's topped with gim (seaweed) pieces. I'm not a big fan of gim, which is called nori here in Japan, but I ate it anyway. This dish had a lot more flavor than the street food, certainly due to the additional ingredients.
Kimchi comes with pretty much any Korean meal you eat here, and at this restaurant there was a "kimchi bar" where you could just take as much as you'd like. Kimchi is usually pretty spicy, and that's certainly the major reason why I liked it. Some kimchi doesn't use the spicy peppers but is flavored with other sauces and juices, but it should always include garlic.
These small slices of fruit were also free for the taking. I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of flavor so I took only a couple, but they turned out to be delicious!
A bowl of soup was the other dish provided with my meal, which was really just a broth with some small pieces of vegetables floating at the top. This was really good too, however.
This meal came with a total of four dishes, though up to a dozen or more dishes could be served in a full-course modern Korean meal. Traditionally, lower class households would have three dishes, while royal families would enjoy 12 choices.
It should be noted that usually, all of those side dishes are generally shared among family members or friends, in a family style take-what-you-want manner. I'd like to sit down at a traditional Korean restaurant and sample one of those giant offerings with dozens of side dish choices!
No comments:
Post a Comment