Christmas time!

I have never had Korean…..

A friend of Derek’s that he has been working with for the last several months is changing jobs so we decided to have a little celebratory dinner. He is Korean, so he took us to the “Korean street” ie 32nd and 6th for those of us who are not Korean and to his favorite Korean restaurant. I have never had Korean food before, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was DELICIOUS. We had one of the main specialties in the Korean diet, the bar-b-que. The restaurant tables actually had large holes in the middle of them where they placed red hot coals in the table which were covered by an exposed open air grill. Then, after ordering, beef, chicken, or a spicy pork (and probably many other sort of things), the waitress / or someone at the table cooked the meat at the table over the open flame. It looked great and smelled great. So, when the meat was cooked (which took about 15 minutes), you placed the meat on a large leaf of lettuce with some rice, sauce (spicy), and something from any of the small dishes of food that they put around the table which contained spinach, cucumbers, peppers etc. Then you wrapped the lettuce around the food – and you had what looked like a lettuce eggroll. Now, here is the thing. The “typical Korean” way to eat the lettuce eggroll is in one bite. Now, depending on the size of the piece of lettuce that you get, this can be a very big challenge. Every time I picked a piece of lettuce, I prayed that it would be a small one so that I would have a chance at getting it in my mouth. (In fact, I never did make one that I could eat in one bite). But Derek and his friend did, and it was pretty funny to watch. Serious, these things were the size of a hot-dog – with the bun!!! (We had to create a rule that said you weren’t allowed to joke when someone was putting the lettuce wrap in their mouth for fear that you would cause them to choke, of course that even made it more funny, so I am not so sure how that worked out for us). But, we cooked and sampled almost everything that was there for us. It reminded me of being in the Netherlands because you weren’t always sure what you were eating, but you just hoped that it would be tasty. This definitely was. This was my second trip into the city for dinner in just a week. On Friday after work, Derek and I joined some of his co-workers at a little Italian restaurant for dinner as well. I am getting quite good at riding the Path and getting myself back and forth to the City. I wonder where we will go next???