galbi at the 5500...

Remember the 5500 we passed on the walk to school? Well, the day that I took all of the walk to school photos, I stopped at this restaurant. Because I was alone, I could obnoxiously document every moment of the meal with my camera. I had nobody to make fun of me, except maybe the restaurant's Korean employees, whom I couldn't understand even if they were.

When you enter the restaurant, you have the choice to sit at "normal" tables or take your shoes off and sit at one of these: (I chose the normal table this time)


Then, I perused the menu... HA! I pointed to the item that had 5500 won next to it and hoped for the best.


In the middle of every table is a grill and then a fan above it that hangs from the ceiling to suck the heat up in the right direction.




This little hut sits outside the restaurant. This guy went outside to heat up the coals for my barbecue.

Then, he brought the hot coals in for me and set them in the grill.


Most Korean restaurants keep their silverware in a little box on the side of the table. There are spoons and chopsticks for everyone!

The sides that come with this meal (clockwise from top right): shredded cabbage salad with a creamy dressing, kimchi, spicy grass salad, lettuce leaves for wraps, pickled radishes and a tray with a red bean paste sauce, a spicy bbq sauce and garlic cloves.

This is the galbi, or barbecued beef. It's marinated in a soy/bbq sauce.

They give you tongs to cook it yourself.

YUMMY!

Close ups of the kimchi and grass salad.

Once your meat is cooked, you are supposed to use the lettuce to make a wrap. Enjoy!

I love this place for many reasons. One, all I'm eating is vegetables and meat so it's amazingly healthy (and the portion of meat is small enough for one - a lot of time it's HUGE). Plus, a lot of the grease drips off through the grate so you don't eat as much of the fat. Two, it only costs 5500 won (which is under $5.50). You cannot eat this healthy for less than $5.50 in America. Three, it's soooo close to my apartment and four (and most importantly), it's delicious!

I just talked with some of my chingus (friends) from XU and they gave me some future blog suggestions. Does anyone else have anything they want to know about or see? Please shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment if you do.

We've booked our flights to Japan! Zach, Liz and I are leaving Oct 3 and will be gone until Oct 5. It's Chuseok, which is the Korean Thanksgiving. Zach has a friend from Tokyo and she's offered to pick us up at the airport and show us around. I'm so excited to have a tour guide! Things run so much more smoothly when you're trying to do a short trip and have a translator/someone who knows their way around.

Don't tell my boss, though! He pleaded with us not to leave the country because of the swine flu. We figure he can't fire all of us because it will cost him too much, so we're gonna make a run for it. Hopefully, he just won't find out, and more importantly, hopefully we don't get swine flu!

Accommodations are still up in the air. We may crash on Zach's friend's floor, or we may stay at a "capsule" hotel. These kind of remind me of mausoleums, except you're still alive when you sleep in them. You rent a bed that has a door around it and you have just enough space to sit up and lay down. It's apparently really popular in Japan. We shall see what happens!

Have a good weekend! I'm might do some shopping tomorrow, so I'll bring my camera along.