Chaiyun, a Chinese restaurant in Yeouido, isn’t exactly a spectacular must-visit spot, but it’s a good place for a get-together. What I especially liked is that if you order a beer, you can drink the bottles you brought along with no corkage fee. It’s hard to drink at home these days, so places like this are precious.

The main event of the day

Moutai that a friend brought back from China. This was my first time drinking the real Moutai.

Front

They say it’s a higher-end line than regular Moutai. When I opened the cap, a thick sauce aroma spread out, as if someone had spilled soy sauce. It was the first baijiu in my life to make such an intense impression… It goes down smoothly, and the aroma lingers for a long time. That heavy soy-sauce aroma, which outdoes even cheonggukjang, might split opinions, but for me it was a strong like… I thought, so there are drinks like this in the world… There’s a reason Moutai is expensive. For the record, I’ve tried all sorts of sauce-aroma baijiu, but this was the first time I’d met a sauce aroma this intense, and I figured plenty of ordinary people wouldn’t be able to drink it.

The drinks of the day

We started with Suntory Ao and moved on to the Hibiki I brought. Ao felt like Suntory’s character with some Scotch mixed in. Hibiki tastes good too when you drink it after a long while. Some say the quality has dropped, but I can’t remember the old taste anymore, so there was nothing to be disappointed about.

These days, even when friends get together, many of them can’t drink, so even with this many bottles on the table we couldn’t finish them all. It used to be one bottle each, so it’s a bit of a shame.

Niulanshan Erguotou

This is the bottle on the far left, and in the end we never opened it… It’s a fairly popular erguotou, so it probably would have been tasty, which is a bit of a pity.

Baekkyung Soju

We couldn’t open this one either, so we drank it at the next gathering. I can feel that all the members have gotten a lot weaker. Next time we should meet at about one bottle per four people.

Basic side dishes

Yangjangpi

Gochu-japchae, I think? Looks like it.

Fried eggplant

Tangsuyuk (sweet and sour pork)

Above average.

Jjamppong

Gotta have a hangover cure.

Ohyang-jangyuk (five-spice braised pork)

You need a protein snack to go with the drinks.

Jjajangmyeon

Middle-aged guys who just can’t give up that final round of carbs…

Fried dumplings

Dim sum

And that’s how we ate well. It was a fun get-together.

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