Duck, Duck ... Duck!

It's been a tough couple of weeks.

I'm homesick for my family and friends, and I've been having moments of feeling very out of place and awkward here. I don't know why-- is it Korea? Is it work? Is it me?-- but the random pauses of loneliness are surprising and not at all welcome.

Then-- BOOM! Things are as they should be. I am my normal smiley, happy self again.

Is this what senility feels like??

Anyways. Onward with my food posts!

A few weeks ago, two of the girls and I went to Anygol (애니골), an area in Ilsan that's a little bit slower paced and a little more spread out than the bigger shopping and eating areas. There's one street (alley?) that consists of faux traditional Korean buildings that house duck restaurants.

Korea has a lot of streets like this, that are themed- wedding shops, shoe shops, musical instrument shops, and everything in between- Koreans like to group all like things together. Makes it easier to bargain shop, I suppose?

Being a lovely summer afternoon, we decided to have a leisurely dinner at one of the duck restaurants, which is quite famous, if I'm not mistaken, called Canaan Duck (가나안덕). Because eating duck is ... a religious experience...? Whatever the story behind the name of the place, we had a good time and a lot of duck.

Duck! I've never seen duck served like this in LA. I feel like perhaps this is a Korean thing- raw duck, chop it up, throw it on a grill, cook the crap out of it.

There were three of us and one duck was plenty. These aren't huge ducks, but the skin is very fatty and what with all the sides, we didn't need to order more fowl.

I don't drink beer because I think it tastes gross, but I loved this beer glass. It's a diagram of how much soju and how much beer to pour into the glass, and what the percentage of alcohol is for each of the different measurements. And yes, this is a typical beer glass in Korea- they also have those big stein-sized glass mugs, but usually at fried chicken places and hofs, not at restaurants.

We all had on baseball caps because no one bothered to put on makeup. I'm turning so Korean, aren't I, concerned about makeup and such?? We didn't really eat or drink much this day-- I think it's because this was when it was just starting to get hot here, and the humidity really puts a damper on any desire to eat or drink until stuffed.

Aw, look at the happy, makeup-less Korean girls. This was actually taken while we were waiting for a table to open up, as the duck restaurants in this area have a very brisk business. Tons of people were loitering around- see the little arcade behind us? Kids were running around and playing on see-saws and other swings, adults were sitting around panting in the heat, and we were acting like idiots and taking photos of everything.

I drove for the first time in Korea yesterday!

We (the three girls in the photo above) went to watch a movie (YeonGaSi, 연가시) last night, so I took one of the company cars from one of the guys, who happened to be in the same shopping area as I was yesterday afternoon. We met for coffee and I took the car and the girls and off we went.

Driving in Ilsan isn't nearly as daunting as driving in Seoul, I would think. If (when?) I know my plans and I decide to stay in Korea for a year or more, I would seriously consider buying a car. Too bad I have no idea where I'll be in six months!

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Cafe Lemon Table, Ilsan

Cafe Lemon Table
Janghang-Dong Ilsan-Dong-Gu Goyang-Si Gyeonggi-Do 868
Western Dom B #221

Telephone: 031.902.2305

레몬테이블
경기도 고양시 일산동구 장항동 868번지 웨스턴돔B동 221호

All week:
11:00 am - 11:00 pm

Cafe Lemon Table is a funny place because it says up front, with a sign near the door, that the food will take twenty minutes to prepare.

Koreans are not a patient breed of people- they expect to walk into a restaurant, peruse the menu for all of sixty seconds, place their order in the following twenty seconds, and have their food piping hot and on the table within five minutes. And that's the way it is in most Korean establishments, as Korean food can be prepped ahead of time to be very quickly served.

Lemon Table is not a Korean place. Their food takes a little while (though not twenty whole minutes) to get to the customers. But it's pretty good, and their bread makes it worth the wait.

The bread is fattening and served with honey. The honey comes in a little dish with a face on it. That face is the face I make when I think of how much butter must be in their bread, which practically oozes with fat. Delicious, delicious fat. Mmmmm.

That's a normal pasta (note how much sauce there is- Koreans really love to over-sauce their pasta. I like very little sauce, because I prefer the noodles, so eating pasta has been tough here at times) and pizza that you're supposed to eat with a fork or spoon. Why? Because the pizza is so gloopy, so full of melted (fake) cheese, so overly topped that the crust cannot handle the weight of its load.

Lemon Table isn't extraordinary, not by any means. But the ambience is nice, the restaurant is clean and well-decorated, their service is good (service in Korea surpasses American service, in general) and when I'm in the mood for (fake) cheese, I think of this place.

Again, I don't have pizza or pasta all that frequently in Korea, but when I want it, I do have it. Sometimes a girl just needs some (fake) cheese to make herself feel better or to celebrate some small something!

My brain's not working well enough for a clever segue, so here's my abrupt change of topic:

Last night, I went with two girlfriends to watch "The Cabin in the Woods." That movie was TERRIFYING at moments and HILARIOUS in adjacent moments.

I've been watching thriller, suspense, and horror movies lately, which confuses me because I've never really liked them. I watched "Faces in the Crowd" a couple weeks ago, which scared me (I'm a wimp!) and wasn't that good.

I watched "The Shining" over the weekend for the first time (Jack Nicholson ... holy crap!) which I had to keep muting. (When I watch scary movies, I'd rather see it than hear it, so I tend to put my fingers in my ears and try to block out the screams and the suspenseful music.)

What is it about Korea that's got me changing so much? Is it adaptation or is it conformation?

At least the long working hours haven't changed...? It's one aspect of my personality that won't be changing, at least not until I move to Italy or France or some other like-minded laissez-faire society.

More food posts soon!

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Trevi, Ilsan

There are a lot of restaurants in Western Dom, most of which I haven't been to. Why? Because my co-workers claim that most of those places are awful and that we can't eat there because we'll regret every bite. Koreans tend to be quite opinionated when it comes to food.

So out of the many pasta places around here, I only go to two. The one I go to more frequently is called Trevi.

Trevi
Western Dom
Janghang-Dong IlsanDong-Gu Goyang-Si Gyeonggi-Do 867

Telephone: 031.931.5450

트레비
경기도 고양시 일산동구 장항동 867

Koreans will typically order a few dishes and share when in a restaurant where Americans would order their own entree. Eating in Korea tends to be a communal experience, with everyone's forks (spoons, chopsticks) in everyone else's dishes. I don't mind, because it means that I get to try more dishes.

This is a typical salad in Korea, even if it is in an Italian restaurant. Overdressed, in my opinion (like all the pastas and most everything else!), and lacking real cheese. I miss real cheese.

See that dish of pink and green? Koreans eat pickles with pizza, pasta, Indian food, American food- any type of food where kimchi isn't served. They claim it cuts through the greasiness of the food, which is how they're able to eat carbonara with about a liter of cream in it.

The pizza's okay at Trevi. Much better than Pizza Hut (though Pizza Hut in Korea is worlds away from American Pizza Hut-- someday, I'll have to do a study comparing American and Korean versions of the same restaurants and fast food chains), though Koreans and their habit of dipping their pizza in honey (!) baffles me.

Me and my big honking glass of wine. Again with the pointy chin, so bizarre how it pops up in photographs. The bread at Trevi is decent, though their sweetish bread is better than their focaccia, which is very un-focaccia-ish.

Ricotta pasta. I really wished that this sauce had been paired with a sturdier noodle. Penne would have been much better than spaghetti, but Koreans generally have all sauces with spaghetti noodles. Those garlic chive sprouts were really strong but good. The ricotta tasted like nothing, but then again, all cheese in Korea tastes like nothing.

Squid ink risotto. The risotto didn't taste like risotto, as it seemed like regularly cooked rice, but it may be because Koreans reserve soft rice (juk, 죽) for the sickbed. Since I'm not a fan of risotto (I like chewy things, like super al dente pasta), I quite liked the texture of this dish. The squid ink was okay, it lends a briny flavor but not much else.

All these dishes (except for maybe the salad) are quite fattening. I find that this is especially true because pasta and pizza don't have that sticking power that rice does, for some strange reason. If I have pasta and pizza for lunch, I'm hungry again in a couple hours, so I'll find something to snack on.

Moderation really must be key, because though I have pasta and/or pizza at least a couple times a month, I don't really feel guilty for it and I don't think I put on an unnecessary amount of weight because of it. I did tend to have pasta more frequently in the States, because it's easy and satisfying and a great go-to, but because it tends to be slightly more expensive to eat Italian food in Korea than eating Korean food, it's not one of my go-to's anymore.

What I really want to find in Korea is a good lasagna. It's impossible to make at home, since I don't have an oven. It might be quicker to buy an oven and get my mother to ship the ingredients (real cheese!) to me.

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