I’m Back! No Need For Fanfare.

I realize that I haven’t posted in a month or so. Several things happened: 1. I had a final, which I just found out I bombed (thanks to nutrition and radiology); 2. I’ve been busy with a research project that I’ve held off due to the previously mentioned final, and possibly this blog (ha!); 3. I have a test coming up in a couple months which will basically decide the rest of my life/career. Not stressful at all.

Oh, I’ve been trying to catch up on life, too. That’s still a work in progress. Don’t think I’ll ever outgrow this awkward thing.

So you can probably understand why I’ve neglected the blogosphere recently (or not–it doesn’t bother me). I also haven’t gone out to eat as much. In the past month, I have probably tried one new restaurant, which I didn’t photograph. Maybe the foodblog obsession has died down due to real life. Hopefully I’ll make it to my 100th post–I’m pretty close–and, what do you know, it may even be positive!

Anyway, I went to Korea House about a month ago. I think it was for Chinese New Years, actually. Why would a Chinese kid go to a Korean place for New Years? Because I’ve never really celebrated Chinese New Years probably. And I like the place.

Korea House is a typical hole-in-the-wall Asian joint, complete with 70’s/80’s style cafeteria tables and chairs, placed back-to-back for the type of dining (or working) efficiency we’ve come to expect from all Asians.

What I like about Korea House is their banchan spread. While it may not be the most colorful, or freshest, or even homemade, it has variety, which brings back all those fond childhood memories of buffet plates piled high with one scoop of everything. My favorites include the potatoes glazed with sweet soy sauce and the bean sprouts.

I ordered something I’ve never ordered before: the kimchi jigae, or kimchi stew. Most of their stews are perfect for cold winter days: thick and steaming. But the kimchi jigae is a watery concoction of red and sour, dotted with chunks of pork rib meat, kimchi, and tofu. The broth lacked the complexity of their better menu choices, such as their yook gae jang or soon tofu. I’m sure I could microwave kimchi juice and come up with something similar. I’ll go back to the yook gae jang next time.

My friend ordered their soon tofu. It looked good. I don’t usually order it because it has seafood. I’d order it maybe if they offered a pork or beef version, but at the moment I’m not too fond of shellfish in my tofu. It’s probably based on a baseless aversion to shellfish and other seafood. Yes, I’m strange and possibly irrational. It’s probably also why I’m not paid to professionally review food.

It’s not the best, but the food is pretty good. I’d go here every so often, just not too often. My qualms with Korean cuisine in general are the lack of choices: every time I eat Korean food it’s stew or bbq. I’ve looked through cookbooks numerous times (I don’t cook, I just like looking at recipes and pictures), and they’re all the same items. I wish there was more variety, but I can’t really complain when what is available is pretty good. Umm…so yea…I like Korea House.

Korea House

6410 Charlotte Pike # 108

Nashville, TN‎

(615) 352-2790‎

Seoul Garden – Huh?

Sometimes you come across something that makes you say “WTF?!”–like the first time I went to Seoul Garden in Nashville. It’s the South, where meat and threes and barbecue dominate the foodscape. There aren’t too many ethnic restaurants here. Usually, to get really good ethnic food, you need a demand for really authentic dishes. The stuff that only immigrants and ex-pats crave. So I have to ask myself, “Why is the food here of the same caliber with food I ate in Koreatown when I lived a few miles away from K-town during college?” Why, of all the cuisines in Nashville, is Korean the most delicious I’ve found so far? I guess the answer to my question was given by a Korean classmate: there are lots of Koreans living around Nashville.

Oh.

WTF? How’d that happen?

I’m not an an expert on immigration movements or social studies, but I am an expert on what I think is delicious. During the last year, I’ve visited a couple times and tried both their barbecue and regular entrees. One thing that I noticed is that the menu is more accessible to people who aren’t Korean. Back in K-town, a lot of places I went to only had Korean menus; I was limited to ordering from just a couple pictures. Here, pretty much every item has a corresponding picture, and each item has a little explanation that includes its ingredients. Thanks to that, I’ve been able to find dishes that I wanted to try in LA, but didn’t know how to order, like yookgaejang and sullungtang.

On this visit we started off with an order of haemul paejun, which is basically a pancake-like dish with seafood and onions. It can be pretty hard to find a well-made paejun; it has to have enough thickness to encase its ingredients, which included octopus, squid, etc., yet it has too be moist on the outside and crispy on the outside, which is often a feat that is quite difficult to accomplish. For $15, you get something the size of a medium/large pizza. It’s a pretty good deal in my opinion, and I don’t even like octopus.

The rest of the time we were busy cooking and eating meat. We ordered kalbi (short ribs), chicken, and pork (the most delicious of all!). Each person got a bowl of rice and an array of Korean barbecue accompaniments, which include green leaf lettuce to wrap up meat, rice, and other toppings like kimchi. I didn’t really think about taking a picture because we were too busy overstuffing our faces, but I guess if you imagine everything in the top picture wrapped in green leaf lettuce, then you can pretty much picture what the finished product looks like. It’s nice to know that I can get a taste of home (by home, I mean college and K-town, and not really home because I’m not Korean, but people think I’m Korean or want me to be Korean, but that’s another story for another sentence not consumed by commas) here in Nashville. It makes living 2000 miles away from home a little more bearable.

Seoul Garden

4928 Edmondson Pike
Nashville, TN 37211

Get Directions

(615) 445-3613

My New Obsession

I recently happened on to one of the greatest things since the powers that be created the almighty Internets (How would I waste my time without it?). ALOE JUICE. Yes, I know, it kinda sounds gross if you live in Fresno, having been exposed to soda and possibly horchata (one of the other greatest inventions since the Internets!), but this isn’t simply the stuff that you rub on burns in liquid form. Actually, it very well could be what I rub over my sunburns in a liquid form, but it’s tasty and refreshing and ranks up there in deliciousness with horchata. Except rather being milky and creamy like horchata, this is more watery, and therefore has much more potential to be refreshing on these hot summer days in the valley when consumed ice cold.

It’s a little odd how I stumbled upon this new love of mine: I was at my friend’s family barbecue, where there seemed to only be beer, when her little brother pulled out a tall, skyscraper-shaped, translucent green bottle that said “Aloe Juice.”

“Hmm…where did that come from?” I asked her later. “Did he just bring that with him?”

“Yeah, probably. He drinks it a lot. I hear it’s also good for your skin.”

Good for my skin? That got the cogs in my head turning. I remember drinking an American version of aloe juice that my parents bought from Costco years ago. Back then, it was like medicine because my dad forced me to drink a cup every day. So why did I buy it at a 99 Ranch Market on the way back from San Francisco? Beats me. Just cuz? Probably.

Anyway, that random act of consumerism has exposed me to a drink that’s watery, yet still tastes somewhat reminiscent to fruity syrup. But even though it tastes like syrup, it’s light in calories, only 70 per serving (for those of you who may be obsessive compulsive calorie counters like I am). However, the best part, or rather, the cherry on top, is the aloe pulp that’s in the drink: they’re like little packets of juice and gelatin matter that pop when you chew them. This isn’t like citrus pulp; it’s bigger and filled up, and almost feel foreign for people who haven’t had Asian drinks with boba and jellies. Interestingly enough, though, aloe juice is made by companies in Korea and Taiwan, but there are also Mexican versions of aloe juice as well, so I guess other Mexican drinks may also have little tasties floating in them.

In Fresno, you can get them at any Asian supermarket, like R-N, and maybe also at Mexican supermarkets. However, the Mexican version is sweetened with honey, and super sweet compared to the Asian versions. I prefer the Korean versions. Drink up!

Kaya

Korean food is pretty hard to come by in Fresno. It’s not that there aren’t any Koreans in Fresno; there are actually a lot of Koreans in Fresno. But there’s only 2.5 Korean restaurants in Fresno, to my knowledge. The half restaurant comes from a food stand inside a Korean supermarket. For the past couple years, my family has gone to Samo’s Kitchen whenever we wanted Korean food. I never really liked going to the place because I was always coming back to Fresno from USC, where I lived only a few miles away from Koreatown, where food was leaps and bounds away from stuff in Fresno. We always saw Kaya when we drove down Blackstone, but never went in. You know how seeing an empty restaurant is unsettling? Well, that’s what always came over us when we saw Kaya. It’s only open for dinner 6 nights a week, and there aren’t many, if any at all, cars in the parking lot. My family overcame that fear one night after we had received recommendations from various Korean friends. It was alleviating, but when we arrived, there still weren’t any customers. There was, however, a group of Korean tourists leaving the place. It turns out that Kaya makes most of their business from tour groups and serves us local folk only for extra cash I guess. Well compared to Samo’s, Kaya is the closest thing we can get to real tasty Korean food in Fresno.

Even though the place is usually empty, and the menu isn’t that large, the food that they do serve is plentiful and good. We ordered soon tofu, bbq pork loin (or belly?), and a spicy stewed fish dish.

As with standard Korean places, our meal started with a complement of panchan. They were all pretty good, but for some reason, they tasted better than Samo’s. Maybe they were made in-house instead of from a can, or maybe because we were in better spirits after we figured out that they weren’t stingy with giving us seconds of the panchan that we wanted more of. Either way, it was a good way to start off our meal.

First came the soon tofu. I noticed that the serving size was meant for multiple people because the pot was significantly larger than most pots of tofu I’ve had at places like BCD and Beverly House in Los Angeles. It was mild tasting, not spicy enough to deserve that tinge of red that colored the dish, but I guess it’s good that my tongue wasn’t scorched to the extent of not being able to taste the other dishes. By the way, the menu says that only combination tofu is available (it comes with seafood and meat), but I’m not a big fan of shellfish, so hopefully they’ll make it with just beef if I ask for it.

While the tables came with tabletop grills, the waitress asked us if it was ok for the kitchen to cook the meat inside, instead of us grilling it ourselves. That was fine by us. I think the act of grilling is a pain. The novelty of grilling my own meats wear off after realizing that I’m just paying to cook my own meat. The accoutrements were pretty unique. One “side” that came with the bbq was a giant pepper that looked intimidating, but had no spice at all. I guess it’s supposed to be dipped in gochujang and eaten like a carrot stick with ranch. The pork didn’t look very substantial when it came out, but after eating a good number of pork-wrapped-in-lettuce, the dish turned out to be heartier than I expected. We had to take this home, and half of the dish became a whole meal for us later.

The final dish we got was a stew with pieces of cod, leeks, zucchini, and korean radishes softened up by gochujang and other spices. The fish pieces had small bones in them, so I stayed away from them because I was too lazy to avoid the choking hazards. Instead, I gobbled up the radish because it was nice and mushy. Sometimes I feel like being young and old are awesome ages for eating cuz mushy foods are so tasty. But then again, I’d miss eating crunchy fried foods. Blast!

I’d like to come back with my family sometime again to try some more of their dishes. Now that we know that there’s a place better than Samo’s, I don’t have to loathe eating Korean in Fresno again. The only warning I have is to come early, because although the hours say they close at 9, the owners here usually close early after the tour groups leave. The night we ate, they were close to closing when we came in before 7, and they closed up just as another table walked in the door at 8, and they refused to serve them.

Kaya Restaurant

4151 N Blackstone Ave

Fresno, CA

(559) 229-5959‎