Tonight we met up with 3 other couples (also adopting in Korea, also staying on the 4th floor of the guest house at Eastern) for a restaurant tour. Tiff had met a few of them on adoption boards leading up to our trip. Two of the three couples live in Minnesota and one lives in Tuscon, AZ.
The tour guide was a guy named Daniel who himself is a Korean adoptee who grew up in Delaware. About 6 years ago he decided to leave the USA and come to Korea. He now works at a Korean culinary school and also hosts these restaurant tours.
I'll keep this brief as it is about 11 pm here and time to rest up for our big day tomorrow. We hope to post sometime after we get Louis tomorrow night. If not then for sure on Saturday before the flight home.
Here are some highlights from the food tour:
Do you think we stick out?
It turns out the meeting place (Daniel's culinary school) was located across the street from the Crown Hotel, the place we stayed in 2007 when we got Liv:
Here is an inside shot of the Korean culinary school where we met:
The tour on the move!
Daniel took us into the back alleys where the real Korean restaurants were located...
Our first stop included some kimchee, tofu, and 2 types of makgeolli- each one quite amazing:
Our second stop featured a chicken dish:
We were surprised to see that scissors were the preferred tool when it came to cutting up the chicken:
This is Daniel giving us the "thumbs up"- which means he thought we were one cool group of adoptive parents:
Ahh- the next stop brought us fried pork and what I called a "Korean Car Bomb"- a drink consisting of soju, beer, and a Coke chaser...all smartly separated by shot glasses:
Even Tiff enjoy one (made with a little less soju than the others):
Note the cutting utensil of choice, once again!
We made some of the best lettuce wraps we've had, with pork, onion, hot sauce, and raw garlic....yum!
I spotted this trio on the way out of the restaurant- too bad they weren't on our menu! (Anyone who knows "Big Mouth Billy Bass" will see these three and wonder when they will break out in a trout rendition of Al Green's "Take Me to the River"...)
While walking out of this restaurant, it really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. However, I took this video to show exactly how close we were to civilization:
Here are a few pics from the markets we walked through on the way to our final restaurant- some interesting and very hard to identify items were on display:
Finally, I shot this video of some very funny locals performing for their crowd, which included mainly a bunch of Americans on a restaurant tour...pretty funny stuff:
Thanks again for sticking with us until the end! Have a great Thursday and we hope to be back in touch soon!
Take me to the river!!
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