2.361
1 (Sun) January 2012
Bulgogi
2.0
by me
at home
-Oksu, Seongdong, Seoul, Republic of Korea-
with W and DJ, the In-Laws
Hanilkwan (한일관) is a Korean restaurant. Landmark. Founded 1939, though actually 1945 under the name “Hanilkwan” and didn’t operate for 3 years from 1950 to 1953 during the Korean War. The original downtown location was a family-style establishment that served tasty, classic Korean fare at reasonable prices, shutting down in 2007. Moving to Gangnam in 2008, with several locations across Seoul, the chain now serves royal cuisine sold at royal prices.
From high school through college, I had been an enthusiastic regular at the Hanilkwan in Myeong-Dong, where my mother used to run a coffee shop. That restaurant closed in 1997.
One lousy overpriced experience at the Gangnam flagship ended my patronage.
Kimchi Chronicles is a documentary mini-series about Korean food. Originally aired on the American station PBS from July to September 2011. Starring Korean-American Marja Vongerichten and her celebrity chef husband Jean-Georges, each episode focuses on a specific ingredient/aspect/style of Korean food, which is first sampled by Marja in Korea and then recreated/reinterpreted with Jean-Georges at their home kitchen in New York.
I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen thus far. Their descriptions, with the assistance of local guides and/or restaurant owners, are accurate and put an appealing spin on Korean cuisine in general. In some cases, their menu choices were interesting for spotlighting certain items that may be relatively obscure, even to Koreans, such as tangpyeongchae (see 2.271 Tangpyeongchae). It was engaging to hear what foreigners had to say about specific foods, especially a renowned chef like Jean-George, and intriguing to see a culinary master taking the same ingredients and creating dishes in his own style.
The trip to Hanilkwan this evening was a direct result of watching Kimchi Chronicles last night. In the beef episode (Episode 6), Marja visits the restaurant, where she dines on bulgogi. Marja claims that it’s the best that she’s ever had, while one of her companions calls it “amazing.” I decided to give Hanilkwan another shot, hoping perhaps that the bulgogi had retained some of the old charm.
It hadn’t. We ordered a set dinner menu, which included various appetizers, rice, noodles, and side dishes, as well as a 200-gram portion of bulgogi. 39,000 won per person. Everyone enjoyed the meal overall, but we all agreed that the bulgogi itself was the weak spot: the meat was stringy and tasteless, the marinade was underseasoned and bland – mediocre at best, just barely eking out a 2.0 rating.
Apparently, Marja has never had good bulgogi in her life, or her palate is way off, or she was being generous for the cameras. Same goes for the companion, an expat, a food blogger whose writings I might’ve looked into on the basis of her appearance on the program but now I probably won’t. Tellingly, the third person in the group, a local Korean, is silent about the bulgogi. I should’ve known.
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