The Old Neighborhood, A New Restaurant

I got a call last week from the VP at Young-il High School, where I taught my first four years in Korea. He wasn't the Vice-Principal then, he was the German language teacher, and his classroom was next to the English Only Zone. We agreed to meet at the school and go out for dinner.

I arrived early in order to take a nice walk around to see what has changed in the area during the intervening four years. Surprisingly, not much. Peggy Pie has replaced Coffee Cafe, the dong office has taken down the bulletin boards in front, and the galbi-tang restaurant has been replaced by shiny new villas. However, the other restaurants I liked are still there, and happily, the street market is going strong.

I had never really documented this place, so I snapped a few shots to share with visitors to the Patch:


This kind of market is on the way out in Seoul, as large supermarkets proliferate and undercut their prices. But as you can see, this one (Mok-dong-5-dong Shi-jang) is still going strong. It has made some changes to compete with the chains, as I saw these pre-packaged, ready-to-cook family meals:


So, I met up with Mr Oh and we made our way to the Gang-seo-gu-cheong eating street, where we were joined by The Stumbler, who took the dinner pictures (except the first). After il-cha at Chicken Baengi (roughly, Chicken Guy), Mr Oh treated us to a great beef place called GramGram.


The name refers to fact that meat is sold by weight. This place was new to us, but it goes on the list, as it was tt was terrific.


We ate "one cow", han mari, basically a sampler from different parts of the cow.


Yum.