We love Korean BarBQ (and other miscellaneous yummy things!)

We are finding that traditional Korean food is not on the top of our favorite food list. Kimchi seems to be on the menu at every Korean meal, so we have tried it many times.  We read that the average Korean consumes 40 pounds of kimchi per year.  It is a fermented cabbage dish that also includes red pepper sauce so that it is red in color.  Denisa loves all of those ingredients, so she had planned to like it.  But it must be an acquired taste, and she never did acquire a love (or even like) for kimchi in the two weeks we visited Korea.

What we did love about the traditional food here is the Korean BarBQ.  The picture below was taken after the meal, but shows our seating arrangement for the meal.  Seats with backs were placed on the floor, and twelve of us were seated around a table with two grills fitted into the table.  We each had a five-inch bowl as our serving plate, and there seemed to be hundreds of little bowls filled with mysterious side dishes when we arrived.

The side dishes are collectively called banchan, and they included uncooked salads made of bean sprouts and grated cabbage to red bean paste and broth soups.  Of course, there was also the ever-present kimchi.  There were also fresh lettuce and a sea weed leaf called myeongi to use as wraps for the meat.  These were shared sides that were passed (and largely ignored) around the table.  Then the glowing coals arrived for the main course.

The top grade Korean beef arrives on the table, and we begin to grill.  You notice from the picture below that the adults are armed only with chopsticks.  This can be a great diet plan for beginners like the two of us.  You can only consume what you can successfully transport to your mouth with those chopsticks.  We each had a bowl of bop (rice) that we were glad to find was the sticky variety so we got more than one grain at a time.

We are eating tonight compliments of friends Jason and Natalie in celebration of our nephew Brian's birthday.  Jason and Brian are doing the grilling at one end of the table, while Denisa and Alexia are grilling at the other.  We have discovered that cooking scissors are wonderful tools to have in Korea, as we can cut up that tender steak into bite-size pieces quickly.  Then it can be easily eaten with chopsticks.

The meal is finished with a savory soup called dwenjang chigae.  We got a spoon to eat the soup, and it was good with our leftover bop.  We think it is interesting that the Koreans have soup for "dessert."  This might be the reason that we haven't seen any over-weight Koreans while we have been here.

The name of this restaurant is Chakangogi, and it is a favorite for the children.  This is because it also has fruit smoothies for them after the meal.  There is also a small area with games and an undersized coin-operated horse for rides afterwards.

But the real treat after dinner tonight was a trip to the Ilsan Beach for fireworks.  Any day of the year there will be fireworks available for sale right on the beach.


With a little adult supervision, we had roman candles and sparklers on the beach.  We had six children and six adults, so it was great fun!









We were actually blessed with two Korean BarBQs while we were visiting for two weeks!  We picked Brian up at work another evening and got a view of the sunset over the yard that builds huge off-shore drilling rigs.

We also got to see a few of the hundreds of scooters parked along the road.  These scooters seem to be the preferred method of transportation for the thousands of men working in the ship yards.

After picking up Brian, we were on our way to our second Korean BarBQ, this time at Fire Beef.  Again, we had a table full of miscellaneous sides and a grill in the middle of the table. 

One of the side dishes appeared still bubbling from the heat of the oven.  This was an egg dish, and one of the family favorites.

One of the side dishes that was not a family favorite were the roasted silk worm larvae.

The family favorite thing is watching first-time visitors taste the larvae.  Denisa and Mark are smiling now, but we have no pictures of them searching for their water glasses to wash that nasty larvae down.

The unique thing about Fire Beef is that they do the cooking for you right at your table.  There is direct fire from something that looks like a blow torch that sears all the edges.  This is also a good picture of more of those Korean side dishes that we sampled.

After the first searing, the cooking of the beef is finished with a giant pillar of fire that caused Katrina to hide behind her Father.

In addition to BarBQ, we have found other foods we love in South Korea.  We love making the trip to the bakery just up the hill from the foreigner's compound.

Some days we have arrived too early, and the bread was too warm to run it through the automatic slicing machine.  But this day we got two multi-grain artisan loaves--fresh sliced and delicious!

We have also discovered that the basement food courts inside department stores are great places to eat.  This day we found the prettiest frozen fruit bars ever.

We can also report that they were not only beautiful, but also delicious!

We have found that trips to department stores and grocery stores are adventures.  The shopping carts are unique, but very well thought out.  Some of them have a spot for a cell phone and a water bottle molded into the handle.

Because land is a premium commodity, everything has multiple floors, and parking is always hard to find.  Grocery stores might be 4 or 5 stories tall, so there are sloped moving sidewalks that move the customer (and the shopping cart) up to the next floor.  The cart actually has special wheels that lock into place for its journey up and down the slope.  Alexia was glad to have Mark to drive the heavy cart around.


As big as those tall grocery stores are, we  found that many items that are common in the United States, just aren't available anywhere in South Korea.  When we needed puff pastry, it was no where in the grocery store.  But Alexia did find that a local bakery would make it from scratch.  We found that ordering 2 kilos is a lot of puff pastry, so we just had to find good uses for it.  Making huge apple turnovers was another delicious South Korea experience.


Even though many things are different, some things remain the same.  Starbucks are found all over South Korea, even though the shape of the building may be quite unique to the area.

As much as we loved Korean BarBQ and the special tastes of South Korea, we have to say that our favorite cuisine of our stay was all the wonderful home-cooked meals that Alexia prepared. Thanks for all the food memories!