8 September 2011
Din Tai Fung Korea
My toes are destroyed. I have just finished inserting things into them to drain the fluid, scroll down for pics.
In other news, 20 metres from my hotel down an alleyway is Din Tai Fung, my favourite restaurant. I didnt know this, imagine my surprise when I turned down there to get off the street so I could type an email on my blackberry.
The armed forces network tv continues to provide amusing ads to remind US soldiers about not putting their babies in the microwave for fun, or how meth amphetamine is illegal, or how hand grenades are not to be removed from the base without orders, or how posting secret militarty plans on facebook is probably a bad idea. Then you get an ad for the various activities workshops they are running, my favourite is 'Learn how to do cool stuff to cars' which is running every third Saturday.
The basement of the lotte department store, as well as a million varieties of moon cakes, they seem to have shrink wrapped decorative packages of partially rotten fish, which cost a fortune!
Would you eat Taiwanese food in Korea a day after being in Taiwan? Of course you would.
My usual order of Xiao Long Bao and braised beef noodle soup.
The quality is amazing as usual, the service of the waiters however was not up to the same high standards as the other countries where I have eaten in the same establishment. My tea was never refilled and I had to wave to get someone to take my order etc.
However they might have been distracted, because at another table, a Korean couple seemed to be on a first date (at 1pm on a Thursday?) and he ordered for both of them, a huge amount of food, and it seems he ordered something she didnt like or is allergic to because she went into an insane panic and so the guy started abusing the waiters.
I am pretty sure it was his fault though, cause I watched him order (trying to get the attention of the waiter to take my order) and he got what he ordered.
After some shrimp and pork dumplings were removed from their table they calmed down and ate everything else.
The outside of the building is very plain, but it has excellent decor on the inside, I forgot to take a photo of the whole room and the lab coat chefs making the dumplings behind the glass lit with spotlights.
This is a new feature of central Seoul, it used to be an open sewer, now its a linear park that goes for miles. It didnt seem to still smell like a sewer, at night its all lit up with different colored lights apparently, so you can get drunk and pass out in a stream and drown in neon colored water.
Todays ridiculous building photo. This one seems to be an impressive waste of space. Its pretty much wafer thin past half way up until you get to that thing on the top, which I am not even sure is habitable.
More confusing is theres no signage, normally you construct a ridiculous building like this to mount a giant advertisement on.
My afternoon snack reward for walking up many steps, CRUNKY. It seemed to be chocolate coated popcorn. I didnt enjoy it very much.