Korea: 짜장면 Jjanjangmyun in Hwajeong

Once I started the downward spiral into my rabbit hole of previously unprocessed photographs from my 6-month-extended-business-trip-slash-sabbatical to Korea, it was only a matter of time until I found myself deep in the thralls of food porn again. The food in South Korea is not only delicious and complex, with everything from starchy noodles drenched in rich, savory sauces to sweet and crunchy bingsu in the summer, amazingly crispy yet juicy fried chicken (the one true KFC supreme; Korean Fried Chicken), to sushi so fresh it'll latch to your throat and try to climb its way back out if given half a chance- but it's often quite affordable, too! Like, absurdly, unreasonably, questionably affordable for the volume of food and variety of side dishes provided. This, naturally, leads to a sense of frustration and/or annoyance when returning stateside and searching out Korean meals- what was a $6 freshly cooked restaurant meal in Seoul is now only available in packaged format in that price range, and if you dare to try to dine in a restaurant it will cost at least twice what you're used to it costing in Korea. Sigh. The ex-pat's dilemma... is this the true definition of a first world problem? I suppose I should really be happy that I can find these dishes in my home country at all, and quit bellyaching at the fact they cost more than I'm used to. 

This bowl of noodles, drenched in a savory black bean sauce of disturbingly high mucilaginous material, is a good example of that unreasonably cheap food. This meal cost less than $3, and was cooked fresh in a restaurant less than 20 feet from the front door to the complex I was living in. This feast was legitimately cheaper than buying an instant cup of ramen from the convenience store equidistant to my front door. They had several other options available at exceptionally low-cost points in this tiny restaurant, too. To be fair, though, the exceedingly slimy consistency of the sauce was a bit of a turn off for me- and this is coming from a girl who happily slurps up the auspiciously named "Dead Body Soup" made with super-slimy fermented soybeans and makes "tororo okra" with boiled okra minced until fluffy and snot-tacular. But for such a low cost, it's hard to complain about a freshly made meal where someone else ends up doing the dishes... While this wasn't my favorite jjangjangmyun of all time, it's a dish I would still recommend anyone try while visiting Korea!

Korea: Simple noms at work and home

Tornado potato!!! These are one of those foods that you see in all the travel blogs and videos espoused as a "must-try" street food... I had walked by a few places that sold it, but never stopped to buy one for myself. Well, lucky for me, one of my amazing coworkers at Fun Caricature grabbed one for me to try while they were out on their lunch break! I think they got the onion flavor? Whatever they chose, it was delicious! To make these pretty looking spirals of spud, they'll take a whole potato and cut it in one go before deep frying it to crispy carbtastic perfection and drenching it in flavored powder fresh out of the fryer. Delicious. It's a bit of a novelty- I mean, it's just a glorified potato chip / french fry hybrid, but you only live once so get you one if you ever get the chance. Live a little. We can always eat more kale tomorrow, right?

 

Of course, a girl can not live by potato alone... though some have tried... so I had to round out my night after getting home with some more carbs- ramen. I gussied it up with some form of crustacean I found at the market, along with soybean sprouts. It's not fancy, for sure, but it was an easy way to stretch my budget and get a little more bang for my buck. Kongnamul, or soybean sprouts, are extremely cheap and fairly healthy. I'd add a heaping amount to any bowl of ramen, so that the bowl was more bean sprouts than noodles! If I had it, I'd toss in an egg, too, and some green onions. Since I had the crustaceans/mollusks here, I opted to skip the egg this time. Not every day living abroad is going to be an epic adventure of hiking a mountain or eating unusual new foods that you picked live out of a tank. Sometimes you just want to go home from work, kick off your shoes, eat some junk food and watch a bad movie. It's okay. This is real life. 

 

Check back next time for more adventures!

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XOXO,

NAU

Vegas: Cici's pizza buffet

On a random weekday, several weeks ago, we happened to be out and about running errands in an area a bit away from where we normally go out to play. By the time our grumbling tummies grew loud enough to bring our attention to our appetites, we'd been out for hours without having eaten and had started to grow a bit hangry. This is never a good situation to be in, as people are never their best selves when ravenous with the need to feed. Upon reaching the destination of our last most critical of missions for the day (which was running on extremely limited time), we spotted a pizza buffet across the street and made it our destination post-errand. Not the most glamorous of food stations, perhaps- and the interior was certainly suffering from an overabundance of messy customers to staff, but it was certainly an amusing meal. We love pizza, like most reasonable human beings alive, and while this place is far from gourmet it's definitely a cheesy, carb-loaded feast that can fill your gullet for not a lot of cash. This is a big part of why it's got such a disproportionate ratio of customers to staff during the busy hours, I suppose. Who doesn't love a good deal? 

The food itself is alright. Like mentioned above, certainly not gourmet food here, but there's enough of the classics (pepperoni and cheese pizzas), salad, and dessert, plus you can get hot wings (for additional cost) to satisfy the whole family. There were birthday parties and kids a'plenty, confirming the family-friendly aspect of the place. There's even a macaroni and cheese pizza (yes, I got a slice) if you're in the mood for carbs and cheese on your carbs and cheese. Why not be extra? 

I didn't take a photo of it, but the table we ended up sitting at had a massive pile of detritus underneath. We weren't eating under the table (thankfully), so we just tried to avoid it with our feet and ignore its existence. There was already a lady shouting at some poor teenaged employee because her kid slipped in a puddle someone else's kid left by the arcade. Most of the tables were in varying stages of bussing so it was hard to find any that didn't have something going on, be it a pile of pizza crusts shoved in a corner or a pile of soggy napkins, but these things. We found one that was clearly unoccupied and focused ourselves on eating instead of judging the decor. I've worked in restaurants before and know how stressful and perpetually understaffed a lot of fast-casual joints can be, so I felt especially sympathetic to the poor employees who were trying to make it through. We knew going into this adventure that we weren't entering a fine-dining establishment, all we wanted out of this was to stuff ourselves with a satisfying pile of pizza and pickled beets (Schrute approved) on our salads. Mission accomplished.

So, I mean... We're obviously not going here every day, let alone week, especially since it's out of the way for us a bit, but I'm not hating on it. Maybe it'll be cleaner, albeit maybe less entertaining as a result, next time we visit, if we find ourselves out that way and hangry again.

💙💚💛

Solid 3 out of 5. 

Does what it needs to do, cheaply, but for the love of pizza please hire some more f**king staff. 

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XOXO,

NAU