KOREAN

where: seoul garden
area: koreatown
when: wednesday, october 15, 2008
how was it: a truly chinful experience

• have come here many times, but tonight was the first night in roughly a year or two...
• ...and was it fantastic!
• the breakdown: 1) little salad with a ginger base dressing, 2) whilst prepping the middle table's cauldron of beef stock over a flame, 3) then come the side 반찬 (pahn-chan) dishes, 4) and the raw thinly sliced brisket and vegetables, 5) dump little by little in beef stock and watch the instantaneous cooking occur, 6) eat eat eat, 7) with leftover stock, udon noodles are prepared within, 8) and finally, the coup de grace, rice, sesame oil, egg, and dried seaweed are thrown into the last bit of beef stock to make instant "risotto!!!"
• referred to as "jin-ghees-khan" (진기스칸), it is essentially shabu shabu... but with so much more!
• this is a paradigm of korean "survival cooking" - meaning, koreans will use every last scrap of everything to consume