Two weeks ago, I had just had a sleepover at Arlyn’s place and Arlyn and I were wandering around Lucky Plaza when we got a text from Betchie saying that Yves had a sudden craving for Korean barbeque.
At first we didn’t want to go because we were still full from having had a very late lunch at around 4pm. I had tried this famous chinese cuisine called Buddha Jumps Over the Wall which is actually a double-boiled soup with a bunch of ingredients. It’s called that because apparently it’s so delicious that if you served it for lunch, the neighbor’s buddha would jump over the wall just to eat it. Well it tasted okay, but it wasn’t so delicious that I would jump over any walls for it. Sorry.
Buddha jumps over the wall soup
Anyway, by the time Betchie arrived, we had changed our minds, so we took a cab and fetched Yves from her place and headed to East Coast, where Ju Shin Jung was located. Yves had found out about it from the internet.
When we walked into the restaurant, our first reaction was awe at how huge and spacious it was. I’m sorry I forgot to take a picture but it was really spacious like not only was it very big but the tables were huge and widely spaced so that Yves had to wonder if this was actually good for them costing-wise, because they could still fit more tables if they wanted to.
We were promptly seated at a table and we ordered two kinds of meat – black pig pork belly and the normal pork belly, which is cheaper. After taking our orders, the waitress came back with some “magic pills.” They are called such because at first they look like this:
But after you pour water on them, they look like this:
They are actually moist towels! Pretty cool, right?
Now although we had only ordered meat barbeque, each order actually comes with a bazillion side dishes, because that’s how they do it in Korea. So pretty soon our bare table looked like this:
The waitress then fired up the smokeless grill at the center of our table. I thought we would have to cook our meat ourselves, but she did it for us, which was good, because we could then focus on eating the side dishes while waiting for the meat to cook. Now while all the dishes were palatable, I had some favorites, which I will focus on.
First up was this cold sour soup. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea (or bowl of soup) but I like sour, so I liked it a lot. I liked it so much that I had finished my entire bowl before I remembered that I had not taken a picture of it. So I took a picture of Yves’s while she was eating, that’s why the spoon is blurred in the picture, because she was eating while I was photographing. Haha.
I also liked this bunch of greens. I knew I would, because I had eaten this when I was in Korea years ago. I don’t know how to describe its taste though.
Everyone liked these next two dishes. I don’t know what the one on the left is made of, but it had a chewy consistency, sort of like squid or meat substitute. The one on the right is mashed potato, and who doesn’t like that?
After a while our meat got cooked.
Our waitress then proceeded to use a pair of scissors to cut them up into bite size pieces.
We then took a bit of them and placed them inside some lettuce leaves, like so:
Then we put some condiments and spices, wrapped everything up in the lettuce and lifted the whole thing into our mouths like a taco. Yum! There was an entire plate of lettuce leaves for this purpose.
We also ordered a bibimbap which we forgot to take a picture of. It was disappointing, though. Didn’t quite taste the way a delicious bibimbap is supposed to taste.
It was a very delicious dinner overall and the great thing was that it didn’t make us feel too bloated, probably because it was healthy, being grilled and vegetable-y and all. Maybe next time we can do it again, but at this other place that Yves knows about.
And oh, here we are:
We’re glad Yves is back. The food trips are back on!
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