Free advice for opening an Italian restaurant in Seoul

After another night out at a mediocre Italian restaurant in Seoul and after cooking up our own spaghetti at home, I’ve decided to offer this list of totally free advice for anyone planning on opening an Italian restaurant in Korea.

1. Pasta comes in all shapes and sizes, please buy something other than spaghetti. It will set you apart. Penne, bow ties, spirals, ravioli, tortellini, anything. It isn’t even hard to find. Just go to Home Plus.
2. Don’t serve Tobassco. Grind up some red chilis into flakes. Not sure where you will find the whole chilies though.
3. Invest in some pepper grinders for fancy topping at the table. I’d prefer if you found some comically large ones in the same family as this whisk, but that’s up to you.
4. Cut your menu in half. then do it again. Offering all possible permutations of chicken, shrimp, bacon and oysters with garlic, tomato and cream sauce is boring. There are tons of great Italian dishes that are still really simple and can be made in mass quantities that use other ingredients. If you aren’t sure about cutting down your menu, please refer to any Kitchen Nightmares episode.
5. While you’re cutting it down and adding something other than spaghetti, how about some lasagna or giant meatballs? Or chicken parmesan? I bet Koreans would love that. Just call it chicken cutlet with cheese and tomatoes.
6. Serve cocktails. You can still offer some bad, overpriced wine for people who are desperate, but give people a selection of cocktails. And I’m not talking about whole bottles of Macallen 12 year and Johnny Walker Black. Single drinks at reasonable prices. You’ll make a killing.
7. Stop chilling your red wine. Immediately. Please pass this tip on to every other establishment in Korea.
8. Have someone put just a little bit of care into the music playlist. Don’t put John Mayer or Norah Jones on repeat and don’t put on whatever playlist or radio station that inserts Eminem after the salad arrives. It kills the mood.
9. And if you offer some free bread and cheap olive oil in a fancy container the foriengers will come running on word of mouth.

I ask only for an occasional free meal or, in the case of wild success, a dish named after me. Make sure it includes bacon and plenty of cheese.

Drink, Drank, K-Drunk: Seoul’s Reaction to Swine Flu

Yes, we have been away for a while.

My family visited over Christmas break.
We have been working on a new, non-food-centric website.
The days are shorter, the nights are longer, and sleep has been a priority.

But we are back and to get us back up and rolling here is a silly, little video involving South Korea’s latest craze from infants to ajummas: Tamiflu.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

We’ve been taking a break from blogging over the holidays while Anna’s family has been in town, but I thought I’d share something fun with you. For Christmas I sent a video to my family wishing them a Merry Christmas from all my students. The classes in the video are my two kindergarten classes Apple and Pear, Super Tots, Fly High 2, Reach Out 3, and Treasures 2.1. If all the Christmas is a little too much for you, I recommend skipping ahead to 3:58 to see some worthwhile bloopers that also help explain the difficulties of teaching young children.

Merry Christmas from SLP from Seoulful Adventures on Vimeo.

Videography and editing by Andre Francisco. Music by The New Standards

I hope you enjoy it and Merry Christmas!

For someone old to someone new, just something simple, something for you

I came home today to joyful news: one of my best friends from high school is engaged. In fact, she is the first of my close friends from high school to get engaged.

It’s moments like these that I get that little twinge of homesickness. I wish I could put on my imaginary running shoes complete with Hermes-like wings on the heels. I would run and fly as fast as I could straight home so that I could sit in Lauren’s living room, the hot fingers of a fire crawling up our backs. We would sit there with warm blankets wrapped around us, a Ledo’s pizza in front of us, and mugs of spiked hot chocolate ready for us to devour then go back for seconds.

“How did he do it?” I’d say. “Where was it? Did you cry? Show me the ring!” I wouldn’t give her a chance to talk until all of my questions were out of my system. Then she would show me the dazzling ring, tell me the full story with all the boring details, and we would giggle well into the night.

But this little, flitty, girlish fantasy will not come true. We will skype…once she is awake. I will see the ring…in gritty, blocky pixels. I will ask all of the questions…one at a time since there will be a lag in the audio and she will start answering after she hears the first question, thus blocking out the rest.

It’s at times like these that I get that little throb in my chest telling me I can’t live abroad forever. It’s at times like these that I just want to sit with my closest friends and watch a movie, we don’t even need to talk. It’s at times like these that I get up, put my apron on, and cook. Because, quite frankly, it’s at times like these that cooking is the only thing that makes me feel like home, no matter how small my kitchen is.

Photo by Anna Waigand

So tonight, I share my recipe for a simple white wine sauce with chicken legs. Nothing fancy. Nothing fresh. Nothing new. Instead, sometimes it’s just that little touch of “There ain’t nothing Korean about this” that makes it all worthwhile.

Photo by Anna Waigand

Chicken legs simmered in a simple white wine sauce
(For my Ghetto BBJG and her new plant in the garden)

5 chicken legs (medium)
Coarse salt
4 tsp dried rosemary, crushed and chopped (Fresh is better, if available)
Butter, 1 Tbl and 2 Tbl
3 garlic heads, minced
1 medium white onion, sliced
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup chicken broth (or water if chicken broth is unavailable)
3 squirts of lemon juice (about 1/2 tsp)
Salt
White pepper

1. Rub chicken legs with coarse salt, white pepper and 3 tsps of rosemary.
2. Melt 1 Tbl butter with 1 minced garlic head in a frying pan over medium-high heat.
3. Place chicken legs in pan. Brown on each side.
4. Remove chicken legs and set aside, covered.
5. Turn heat down to medium. Melt 2 Tbl butter. Add onions and 2 minced garlic heads to pan. Saute until start becoming translucent.
6. Add white wine, 1 tsp crushed, chopped dried rosemary, chicken broth (if using water, add more salt to taste), lemon juice in pan. Salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 10 minutes.
7. Add chicken legs to white wine sauce. Cover and cook for 15 minutes (or until done), turning the chicken halfway through.
8. Serve on rice and enjoy the delicious simplicity.

Korean Links: Latkes, makgeolli, and taco trucks

We mostly write about our own adventures on this blog, but we’re also going to try and provide some more links to interesting news about Korean food. Here is a round up of some recent stories we’ve found.

Korean Latkes – Beyond Koreanfornian Cooking

Beyond Koreanfornian Cooking, a great blog you should check out, has reposted an old video of how to make Korean Latkes. If you want to put a Korean spin on some great holiday food we suggest checking it out. Looks yummy.

Rice Wine Rising – The Korea Times

This is a great editorial about the rise of makgeolli, traditional unfiltered rice wine, not because it offers some pretty good ideas for way to expand makgeolli’s appeal, but because of this great quote.

People can hardly drink too much makgeolli and become intoxicated or obese, as this unrefined wine makes them feel full easily. In short, most people ― except for incurable winos of course ― can remain slim, sober and satisfied in alcoholic terms.

For the record, makgeolli has a slightly higher proof than beer and doesn’t fill me up as much as Cass, so getting drunk is certainly a possibility. Also, no winos in Korea actually drink wine. Would you call them sojos? Sounds like a cereal.

Eating LA: Kogi BBQ Food Pick – Moveable Feast
A quick and interesting quote from the owners of San Francisco’s famous Korean taco truck, Kogi BBQ, about where they eat when they aren’t serving up delicious tacos.

Sinchon has the best bar names in Seoul

Recently we’ve spent two weekends roaming around Sinchon looking for food and LP bars, and we’ve noticed more strange and interesting bar names than anywhere else. At every block another neon sign makes me tilt my head to the side and question how a bar would get that name. Sometimes it might be a mistranslation or a joke Koreans might not get and other times it’s just wonderfully straightforward like Beer O’ Clock.

All photos by Andre Francisco

I wonder how strong of a theme we’re talking about.

You decide.

Loved that game. I wonder if you get dysentery from eating at the bar or if you have to leave one of your party behind. I just hope my wagon wheel doesn’t get stuck in the mud.