[SPOILER="UNLIMITED DONKATSU (8/9)"]Sounds too good to be true? Well, it's not false. Even the name of the place is named "Unlimited Handmade Donkatsu"
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Let's explore the inside.
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This tells you all you need to know. No matter how much you eat, it'll cost you 6,900 won if you're 14 or older, 5,000 won if 8-13, 4,000 won if 4-7. It's highly preferred for the owners if people can recycle the dish to go for whatever round they want, and if you leave any food behind, you will be fined 2,000 won. They remind people of this fact in several places of the restaurant, such as the water vendor:
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Next, let's move on to food.[Image: http://i57.tinypic.com/2n9g4ud.jpg]
As you can see, the drinks are refill. Only downside is there's only three kinds of drinks besides water, which is Fanta, Sprite, and Coca Cola.
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Here are the glorious sides. From left to right and up to down, they are Kkadugi (Korean Radish Kimchi cut into squares), Pickles, Danmuji (pickled radish), Korean pepper with Ssamjang (one of Korean dipping sauces), condiments (Ketchup, Mustard, and some other sauce I can't identify because I haven't tried it), Sauce for the cabbage salad on the right.
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Here's what the restaurant is all about. DONKATSU HYPE. In all seriousness, this is easily the best, highest quality, Donkatsu that I have eaten in my life. And the best part? You can eat this all day, everyday. You can see this made right on the spot, as well as filtering the excess fat to make the Donkatsu satisfyingly crisp.
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Here are the two sauces. The one on the left is the sweet sauce, and the one in the middle is the spicy stuff. The right is not a sauce, but a soup of cream, which can be eaten as a side.
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I apologize for the poor quality. In my own defense, it was super hard to hold on to the hot lid and take picture of the same time so I took a picture in a 1.5 second window frame that I could.
Even though this place's main attraction is Donkatsu, this is also known for this food, known as Ddukgalbi. If you want a higher quality picture, Google it yourself. Anyway, this place also has quality Ddukgalbi, and it's hard to find such a fresh and thick Ddukgalbi, even in Korea.
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Here is Ddukbokki, and its quality is not on the level of the Donkatsu or Ddukgalbi, but it was definitely satisfactory. Also, eating Donkatsu in Ddukbokki sauce was tons better than I anticipated.
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Here's a Sagolguk, or Powdered Beef Bone Soup. The apparently use pure Korean beef, and also let the soup cook for 12 hours and filter the fat. You can definitely feel how clear and lean (but in a good way) it is when you eat it.
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This is what I got, and I ate two more Donkatsus and three more Ddukgalbis after this round. Needless to say, didn't have to eat a lot for dinner.
Overall, I'd give this place a 9/10. Ridiculously good food overall, but there are some downsides. The biggest problem is that there is a long wait, especially for students during school years. The second is that there is no dessert, although that's not a big deal since there are other decent places around for those things. Otherwise, it's a cute place to go, very friendly vibe, hard working people to make you the best, crispy Donkatsus. This place has been featured on TV shows a couple times, so it's pretty safe to say they will keep their good image up. In general, I'd very highly recommend people to go to this place. If anyone who is interested in visiting Korea, you can search ë¬´ì œí•œ ìˆ˜ì œ ëˆê¹ŒìŠ¤ in Google and it'll show its whereabouts. [/SPOILER]
[SPOILER="KFC (KOREAN FRIED CHICKEN) (8/10)"] Next up, I visited to eat KFC, or Korean Friend Chicken. It's a fairly famous place called 노랑통ë‹.
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It's not a huge place, but the vibe is always good, and it's crowded as always. But you won't have to wait a long time, and there's also an option of take out and delivery.
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That's what the inside looks like. Not a huge place, but you can definitely tell that the place can be fully occupied a lot of time. The drawings on the walls are pretty cute too.
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This is what they give you when you first order. I ordered Padak, which is a variant of KFC that you eat along with sweet and sour green onions. You can tell they give you sweet cabbage salad. Then there is a dish for sauces, one is spicy dip for chicken, other is salt and pepper. What you see next to it in a weird bowl is something that you won't see in other wings places in other countries. In Korea, the square-cut radishes that are prepared with a sweet and vinegary water, is basically a requirement when you eat the chicken. You will literally never see a place that don't serve the radishes. The mini bin with a plastic bag is there so that you can throw away your bones. Padak here was served boneless so I didn't have to go through that hassle.
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So here's the chicken. It was 19,000 won, and contained two types: Kkanpung chicken (garlic soy sauce marinated chicken) and Yangnyum chicken (the spicy kind). You can see a big pile of green onions in the middle. What you would do is you wrap the chicken around with the green onion and put that pile into your mouth. Reason I went for Padak instead of regular chicken? KFC is hard to find in the US to begin with, but when you do find them, it's also rare that you'll find Padak being served. So I took the opportunity to indulge myself in such delicacy that I know I won't be able to have in the US.
I already had a high expectation of this place due to its presence in TV shows, reviews, etc. Needless to say, that was fulfilled. If there were one thing I didn't like, it's probably the server that came to our table, who seemed to be inexperienced, but I guess that's not restaurant specific. The cool thing about this place is that the chickens here are not fatty, very satisfying taste. Also, this place is interesting in that they also sell fries, but not just any fries... all with the sauces that they provide here, and also, they serve waffle fries in it too. I haven't had the chance to try those yet because I came for chicken, not fries. But, if I do get the chance, I will try to taste those as well.
Overall, 9.5/10[/SPOILER]
[SPOILER="Food? Nah... (8/11)"]
I did eat something, but not something that would be considered anything extraordinary.
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I just visited a bunshikjib (usually a local block that you can eat quick), and simply had ddukbokki, oden and sundae (noodles wrapped in pig intestine with seasoning). The bunshikjib was great, but not necessarily the absolute best place out there. Here is what I wanted to really talk about.
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That's right, it's a cat cafe. Decided to make a visit here because I most definitely am a cat person.
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On the way up, you can see handmade art on the walls. When you go inside...
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Steps are as follows:
1. Take off your shoes and wear the indoor slippers given
2. Use the hand sanitizer given
3. Push the door and come up to the counter~
"Welcome to cat heaven!"
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The inside, pretty self explanatory, with all the furniture for cats as well.
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Cats are free to roam around, sit in their boxes, sleep wherever, get on top of a table, or sit on people's laps.
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Selfie with a cat because I can.
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I also wore a Grumpy Cat shirt because I'm a dork, but turns out there was a cat that looked very similar.
This place deserves 8.8/10 in my eyes. The biggest disappointment was that I couldn't actually hold the cats and move around, but that was understandable. There were enough cats that were friendly enough to just come to me and few also simply go up to people's laps, often falling asleep there. Overpriced drinks as expected, maintenance fee+cats=high cost.
[/SPOILER]
[SPOILER="Shabu shabu? (8/13)"]
So you might think, why talk about Shabu Shabu? Well, it's not "Korean food", but I've found that they enjoy the food differently. It was a dinner with my family, so I decided to capture the moment.
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So here's the meat. But wait, there's more!
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There's the veggies, one octopus, dumplings, etc. But wait... there's more!
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Now the fabulous sides. You can always refill the sides at no cost and usually are of great quality. My favorite one was the one in the black plate, Dotori Mook, or Acorn Jelly. But, it's not a sweet tasting jelly, but rather, plain, and it has soy sauce and sesame seed dressing. You can also see western style (kind of) salad on the right, Cucumber Kimchi below the Dotori Mook, Kongnamul Muchim (Seasoned Bean Sprouts) as well as various other sides next to the Dotori Mook.
[Image: http://s4.postimg.org/6t66saul9/20150813_180837.jpg]
So while eating, I was too busy to capture the pot while Shabu Shabu was cooking. In this image, the sauce on the very left is Gochujang (red pepper paste), although this is very far from traditional ones. You can see chungyang peppers (which are VERY spicy) on top of the paste, rice in the middle, and the main dish you pick out from the Shabu Shabu pot.
[Image: http://s4.postimg.org/iwbifv5nh/20150813_183815.jpg]
So after you eat all the important stuff from the pot (aka the meat, octopus, dumplings), there's the second course... which is Kalgooksoo (thick Korean noodles)! You can sometimes see Shabu Shabu restaurants in the US offering Udon noodles, but you won't be able to find the ones that do it like in Korea. And because food was deemed more important than taking photos as it should be, I didn't take a picture of noodles in the pot.
[Image: http://s4.postimg.org/6x008k02l/20150813_185053.jpg]
Here's the last course, after you're done with the noodles, where they can make the left over broth into a Jook (porridge), with rice and several veggies.
8.5 /10. Food was great, but service was so-so. I guess I did come pretty early for a standard dinner time, which they probably didn't have enough time to prepare for. Would I recommend this place? Definitely, especially if you're with a group.[/SPOILER]
[SPOILER="MABINOGI FANTASY CAFE (8/15)"][video=youtube;fu-P8CyJ71k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu-P8CyJ71k&feature=youtu.be[/video]
The noise you hear in the first part is because of the chickadees here.
The first time we went, it was full, so we had to reserve, which meant we had to have working phones (none of us had one), so we went there back and forth 3 times. We literally waited for 6 hours.
P.S. Do not get the Green Tea Bingsoo by itself.[/SPOILER]
[SPOILER="JEJU TRAVELS (8/19-23)"]
Alright, there's gonna be lots of pictures, so I decided to make a google doc zip file instead.
[SPOILER="JEJU LOVELAND (NSFW)"]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4s5cx2KorAZdFBNTGNzTTV0UjA/view?usp=sharing
So to explain few of the pictures, the guy that is holding a golf club... that's not really a golf club. Hint: it's a part of his body.[/SPOILER]
[SPOILER="BIG ASS ELEPHANT FISH AND OTHER FOOD"]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4s5cx2KorAZeW5qSlpIR19fSzQ/view?usp=sharing
By the way, this restaurant has been featured on Eat Your Kimchi as well, I figured out. You can search their video on Youtube.[/SPOILER]
[/SPOILER]
So that's it for my travel in Korea. Will make another thread next year when I'm in Korea.