Cycle 7 – Item 175

28 (Tue) June 2016

Chicken Curry

2.5

at Delhi

-Sinsa, Gangnam, Seoul, Republic of Korea-

with the Family

Mission to Korea + Personal Deviation : Day 4 (see previously 7.175 Ddeokbokki…).

In Seoul.   Here for a planning meeting on the upcoming parliamentarian forum in November (see most recently 7.009 Grilled US Beef Tenderloin), which the Organization had supported last year (see generally 6.178 Sliders).  Arrived Saturday morning.  Flying back to Manila tomorrow evening.

WORK

ACCOMMODATION

Back in the day, the landmark Princess Hotel – smack dab in the middle of what people typically refer to as “Apgujeong” (technically Sinsa), once a hotbed of restaurants, bars, clubs, karaokes: i.e., the original Gangnam Style – was the final stop at the end of the night for those who’d managed to secure a certain ticket to ride.

Although the logistics of this short mission didn’t require me to stay in a hotel, I checked into one anyway (because it’s in my pecuniary interests to do so).  I chose the hotel closest to home (the temporary apartment in Apgujeong), which happens also to be the cheapest (to maximize those interests), but I didn’t actually stay there.

DINNER

Delhi is an Indian restaurant, sorta.  The menu focuses primarily on Japanese-style curry rice.  Astoundingly, it’s been around for at least 26 years in a neighborhood where most restaurants don’t last a year, though I wouldn’t exactly consider it to be a “landmark” restaurant.

In my senior year (1990), on the occasion of my very first formal date – with SK, who will forever be the one that got away – Delhi is where I took the lucky girl to dinner.  For a high school student on a monthly allowance, it was a relatively sophisticated venue choice, especially given the dearth of affordable date-worthy dining options in Seoul at the time (when TGI Friday’s opened a few months later in the spring of 1991, it was a game changer).  I’d had girlfriends before that, but they’d already been friend-friends, and we’d gone out to eat countless times before the romantic relationship began, so no formal “dating” per se; with SK, a new student to SIS, I had ask her out cold.

Nostalgia rekindled by checking in to the Princess this morning, I was inspired to take the lucky wife and kids to dinner at Delhi – for the second time in my life, probably the last.

The food was okay.

(See RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)

(See GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See HANSIK)

(See BOOZE)