Do you have a favourite place to dine? I finally found mine. ((:
My favourite place to eat 24/7 used to be Ayam Penyet. I've blogged about it a few times now, until I found this cozy lil' place...
Sorry ayam, you just got kicked off to the back of my head! Tu lah jadi ayam; tahi jerr hangat. LOL!
Let me take you to a Korean restaurant named, I don't know cause I can't read Korean. But I can tell you where it's located.
Once you reach Sri Hartamas, find the Maybank along the street of Hartamas Square and get yourself a parking spot. This unforgettable place is just right behind the Maybank along with the countless bars and pubs. Find the lantern and go upstairs. You'll most prolly see me there.
Even though it has a pretty bare and empty bar, note that you don't need an array of various alcohols to open a bar in a Korean restaurant. All you need is Soju and more Soju! I'm so addicted to Soju and I'm a little worried now... lol.
The concept of the restaurant is a bit Japanese; as you sit on the floor with your legs crossed. However, it's a bit different because they provide you with legless chairs!
And what's a LEGLESS chair?
This is how it looks like.
The first time I went there, I couldn't get use to it. It also didn't help that I was wearing a summer dress and my Korean friend, Park Ju Song had to keep asking me if I'm okay. lol!
Park is an architect but he now opens his own shop renting Korean Dramas at Plaza Mt. Kiara. Apparently, he earns more like that. And it's good money. Hehehe~
So people, don't study architecture. It takes you 8 to 10 years or never to climb up "there". Open a shop and rent clown noses instead. (o:
Park took me to this particular Hanguk shiktang (Korean restaurant) for two reasons.
1. The food served here is 100% authentically Korean. This place is fairly hard to spot and only Korean knows about it, while other obvious Hanguk shiktang-s are visited by 50% Koreans and 50% Malaysians where food has been modified (apparently sweetened) to suit the Malaysians' taste buds.
So if you are looking forward to taste real Korean cooking, this is the place you should be.
2. The toilet here is spanking new and sparkling clean! When I say sparkling, I really mean sparkling. The Koreans are very particular when it comes to hygiene. That's why if you ever go to Korea, you would come to realize that even the toilets at the most rural area in Korea is CLEAN. Unlike China.
Park said that he will ONLY go to restaurants that has clean toilets and most preferably, with a bidet. Haha!
The picture above is the famous water filter machine which the Koreans simply love. You will either see this, or a coffee machine in front of shops, petrol stations, loos, simply anywhere!
Convenient kan? (:
This is another little bar where they prepare drinks for the customers.
Blinds and pillows are provided to give you privacy and coziness as priority~!
This menu had me from Hello! I love Korean food so so much if anyone would have asked me what my favourite food is, this is it. I've been to Korea twice and I swear to the wall I want to go there again!!!
Korea is not a very fancy-fancy country and it's nothing like Vegas. It feels very dry.
Every now and then you pass by a stall by the road side selling the same old, same old stuff like Hot Korean Rice Cakes (it's actually verryyy sedapp), hot smokey sweet potatoes in brown paper bags, hotdogs (you'll be surprised how the hotdogs flood their amusement parks!), and ice creams (the towering tall ones or the biji-bijik ones - please go for the bijian ones Champagne flavoured please!!!).
There are many factories and condominiums, suffer traffic jams too, but I have no idea why I'm just so-in-love with Korea! Even Japan doesn't attract me that much. Seoul is the second place in the world where my heart would love to be placed at after Miami.
Now allow me start with the food :
This is pronounce as kahm jah zon. kam ja means potato. zon means patties or cake. So if you were to order vegetable patties, (vegetable is call yah chay) just add a -ZON behind ya chae.
So you say : Ya chae zon, chushipsio! (chuu-sheep-she-oh)
Geddit, geddit?!?! LOL
This is a kind of fish we both couldn't figure out what species exactly was it. But fish in general is call mulkogi (mul-koe-ghee). It tasted a bit weird. It's like this -
The moment you put a pinch of this into your mouth, you feel the texture rubbing against your tongue and its awesome for a minute. But as you were about to SWALLOW it, (the minced fish by now rubbing the BACK of your tongue) tastes like urine! @@"
Damn mulkogi.
Next up is Tok Pok Ki which means Hot Rice Cake. Aahhh~ This is the one I was talking about. Remember to boil it for 10 minutes before eating it! ;)
After the soup thickens, this is how it would look like. Piping hot saucy red soup mm mmm! Irresistible noh? The long white mini bolsters are Korean rice cakes. They are absolutely chewy and you will feel very geram once you had one, so you will definitely dig your ladle for another. And oh, don't forget the glass noodles!! *slurps
Korean Fish Cakes. But I don't think these are call mulkogi zon.
This is a heart and tummy warming family dish the Koreans MUST-HAVE for new year, and its very suitable for winter.....
Imagine sharing a bowl of this by the roadside with your winter gloves on together with your love one... Romantic kan?? That might give you something for your mind to wander off to Korea for a while~ ^^
This is Bul Tak Charp. A direct translation for FIRE CHICKEN!
According to Park, chilli is the symbol for a guy's dick so you can't just say chilli in Korean. Hahaha! It's funny how they use chilli as a symbol for that, while we use food such as sausage, banana, or even mushrooms!
I asked him what about the female genital part; what's the symbol for it and he said its ash. Burnt ash from wood. =/
So when you see someone hanging chillies on their door, it means the couple just gave birth to a son. If you see a wood's hanging there, it means a daughter was born.
Heeere comes, my favourite part. The Soju!! Mind you I'm not an alcoholic but the whole idea is to eat the Bul Tak Charp slowly and chit chat over a bottle of Soju! Or maybe two, bottles.
"Because the chicken is hot, like on fire. You know when it's pedas we drink water? We Koreans drink Soju," he said laughing. EXCUSES Ju Song, EXCUSES!!!
Park brought along a small bottle of honey dew essence like thing call meh shil and mixed it into this traditional Korean kettle with Soju. This colourize the Soju making it slightly orangy and adds in a hint of faint sweetness to it. *Aahhh~ Kam pei!
p/s : My Korean friend Park Ju Song thinks he is not hensem so he didn't want to take pictures with me. He is not a Bae Yong Jun or Kwon Sang Woo. Or a...
Kim Seong-Su.
So you didn't miss anything, girls! The cutest Korean guys are all in Korea. LOL!!!
I went again the 2nd time yesterday with a friend name Herbert who came down to KL from Kota Bahru, Kelantan. I met Herbert on my single journey back from Perhentian last May.
Since he had his meeting at Plaza Damas, I thought of having dinner somewhere nearby and WHY NOT MY FAVVV RESTAURANT IN THE WWW?!
So here we go again. But don't fret; I'm not starting all over from one. Park said that to see if a Korean rest is good or not, go there 2 days in a row. If they serve you the same side dish as yesterday..... you know what that means.
So I learned another new thing about Koreans. They appreciate they side dishes very much! So if I ever marry a Korean man, I'm gonna put my heart and loovveee into my cooking. *shy!
Herbert was shocked (literally shocked) when he saw this 3-in-1 plate. Its 3 individual plates sambung together becoming one.
While I, personally was shocked (to almost death wtf) when I had to eat this - Cold boiled baby octopus *ewwwww! No wonder they gave us the chilli sauce.
Kimchi stew. Famous kimchi stew; my favourite. I can eat this all day.
I was just telling Herbert to imagine how wonderful it would be if it's winter now, and you eat this hot stew to warm your body PLUS the Soju accompanied by the spicy grilled meat...
Then you go outside for a walk after a hearty dinner under the freezing snow... How COOL is THAT!?
Dream on, man! Sigh~~~
This time, it's spicy pork. Tweajigogi (tway-jee-go-ghee) is pork.
Fresh Soju!!!
I had 3 glasses with me - A glass for water, a shot glass for Soju, and a chilled glass of green tea (complimentary from madam boss).
After dinner, I felt gatal and I wanted to buy a bottle of Soju to take home. So we walked to a fake Seoul Supermarket along the road with Maybank except there's no snow to contradict the temperature of our now burning tummies.
Since I was feeling sooo Korean, I bought an ice cream from the shop. It's very kan cheong to eat ice-cream in the cold; I mean winter, but in this case at least we had the RAIN! While this is not just an average ice cream, it is a..........
A strawberry ice cream cum baby chewing gums!!!
Silly Herbert. Kacau jerrr~ *Ish!
Kena balik sendiri. HAHAHA!!!
Apparently, I did NOT just buy AN ice cream. I bought ALLLL the available flavours they got there, and a Soju. *Yay! I just Koreanized my fridge!
Now all I need is a romantic boyfriend who loves to share these beauties with me... ;p
Ok. Now for those of you who would love to learn some Korean grammar, here are some tips I learned from Park.
1. If you hear there's a -nikka behind a sentence, that means its a Question.
2. If you hear a -da (e.g. -ssumnida), that means it's an Answer.
3. If it's a -yo (e.g. -du seyo), it depends on the tone if it's going up, or down. Then it could potentially be a question, answer, or a statement.
Cause I was so so confused why they always have to nikka nikka or seyo seyo making their sentences so fuckin' complicated and damn long!, now I know why.
It's also different when you speak to elder people, and it's also like for the chilli case? You miss a syllable like that and it becomes a penis.
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