We had a small meetup at a Chinese restaurant called Keumjung in Hoehyeon-dong.
Side dishes
Come to think of it, there are a lot of Chinese restaurants around here. Probably because of the Chinese embassy.
Quanjiafu (mixed seafood stir-fry)
It’s a dish with abalone and other seafood, and I’d heard it’s the house specialty, generous in portion and tasty. Apparently it used to be good, but that day it was pretty disappointing. No smoky wok flavor at all..
Kongfu Jiajiu
We opened a bottle someone had brought along, and they kindly brought us glasses. We hadn’t even ordered much food, so I felt a bit bad.
Quanjiafu, take 2
About halfway through the quanjiafu, a bit of dish scrubber turned up, so we had them make it again. The replacement came with far fewer kinds of seafood.. which left me even less sure what I was supposed to be eating.. We thought about ordering more, but we were full and itching for a second round, so we just left.
Dessert
As we were about to leave, they told us to have some dessert first…
After debating what to eat, we went for the braised hairtail that’s supposed to be famous near Namdaemun. It was just a short walk, and there’s a whole cluster of hairtail places there. Looks like they’ve been on TV a lot, too.. We picked one that looked easy to walk into and got our order in at last order.
Steamed egg (gyeran-jjim)
Comes on the house.
Braised hairtail (galchi-jorim)
They’re not exactly using top-quality hairtail. The MSG flavor was strong too, so I only ate a little and stopped. The steamed egg was better, honestly.. Not especially cheap, either.. I don’t think I’ll be back. Then again, the price might just be inflation..
Whether a meetup succeeds or fails doesn’t always come down to how good the food is. That day was a fun meetup in its own way. Still, next time I’d like to join a gathering where the food is good too. Easier said than done, I suppose.