Cycle 5 – Item 26

31 (Fri) January 2014

Tangsu Yuk

3.5

at Deo Keun Jib

-Geumgok, Bundang, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

with the Family

1st Home Visit (Day 2)

In Seoul to spend Lunar New Year with the family, the first time home since leaving for Manila earlier this month.  Flying back Sunday evening, giving me 3, maybe 4, dinners in town (I calculate time in units of dinner).

• • Day 1 (5.025 Tangsu Yuk)
  • Day 2 (5.026 Modeum)
  • Day 3 (5.027 Ddeok Guk)
  • Day 4 (5.028 Sure, Why Not, The Beef This Time)

Most places closed for the holiday, we were quite happy to have dinner at Deo Keun Jib – open 365/24 – one of our old standby restaurants.

Since our last visit a couple years ago, the barbecue part of the business had become one of those a quasi-butcher shop arrangements.

The prices were good = hook.

The meat looked good = line.

And I was overwhelmed by the urge to feed meat to my growing boys = sinker.

The meal was excellent.  I can’t recall the last time enjoying beef so intensely, so thoroughly, so gratefully, particularly beef in this Korean barbecue form.  The meat itself, a mixed modeum platter of mostly blade with a few slivers of ribeye tossed in, was respectable enough, tasty/fatty/juicy, but I ate like I’d been starved.  Even after a mere two weeks away, I suppose that I was in desperate need of restoration.  Everything else on the table was or at least seemed, same thing, great.

Or maybe it was just spending quality time with the family.

A very truly happy Happy Lunar New Year’s Eve!

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)