Cycle 16 – Item 30
4 (Tue) February 2025
Post 5,509
Hong Kong Beef Noodle (Wuyuk Tang Myeon)
2.5
(Hyundai City Mall)
-Munjeong, Songpa, Seoul, Republic of Korea-
solo
Lan Kwai Fong Noodles is a Chinese(ish) restaurant. Offers only a handful of items, including beef noodle soup, mala shrimp noodle soup, and dumplings. Franchise, currently with 11 branches.
Though named after Lan Kwai Fong, a popular neighborhood in Hong Kong, not a single item on the menu seemed to be something one could find in Hong Kong or within the broader Cantonese tradition, as far as I’m aware.
Still, I was game to try, even though I had zero hope that the food would be Chinese in any way, so long as it was something different from the standard options at a Korean shopping mall food court.
Incidentally, I was in the mall to purchase a bench coat or “long padding” (as they’re called in Korean), a puffer that extends below the knee, originally designed for soccer players to wear on the sidelines (“on the bench”) during cold weather. The temperature in Seoul suddenly dipped below -10 degrees C, and forecast to stay there for the rest of the week, so it seemed like the time to finally get one, which had suddenly come into fashion while I was in the Philippines.
The Joongang Daily, my daily English newspaper (it comes packaged with The New York Times), was obsessed with the garment for a while, publishing no less than 9 articles (probably more) within a 13-month period (I wasn’t a subscriber at the time) relating to the bench coat:
- 2017 Nov 22 “Fashion craze of this winter is the bench coat“
- 2017 Nov 28 “Long padded coats warm up winter fashion“
- 2017 Nov 30 “A coat’s cost: one night in Lotte“
- 2017 Dec 7 “Games make cash registers ring“
- 2017 Dec 18 “Licensing contract brings Lotte Olympic gold“
- 2018 Feb 25 “Discovery is No. 1 as bench coat season ends“
- 2018 Jun 8 “Duck down prices quack under pressure“
- 2018 Jul 5 “Bench coat bargains“
- 2018 Dec 27 “Bench coats are so last season – short is in now“
Then, nary a single word for nearly 8 years, until last year, when a new article had caught my attention: “Fashion meets function: Why Koreans can’t let go of the long padded jacket” (clearly, The Joongang Daily can’t let it go). According to the article, the bench coat’s popularity in Korea peaked during the lead-up to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, aligning with the dates of the prior articles. Apparently, it remains a distinctly Korean trend: “an item foreigners are tempted to purchase when visiting Korea.” Anyway, I had always noticed people wearing the long coats, but hadn’t realized that it’s a thing in itself.
The food was okayish. Everything tasted 100% Korean, not a bad thing per se, but not as promised by the name of the place. I doubt that I’ll go back for more, except maybe the mandu.
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