Dining in December
- (っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ manya ♥
- Dec 30, 2017
- 6 min read
안녕하세요!
This month I had the opportunity to go to a restaurant called YeeHwa. It's a restaurant in Al Nasr (near Toys R Us) that specializes in East Asian cuisine, specifically Korean and Japanese. They serve all kinds of noodles, sticky rice, dumplings and of course, sushi.
On this visit, I was accompanied by my sister, Mallika, who recently came back home from Boston because her university had a winter break, her best friend, Claudia, who also came back from university, and my good friend Abhay. Last year before they graduated, Mallika and Claudia treated us to this restaurant and now to think of it, it was kind of a ritual to go with the same group, but with both in the States, it is hard to do so.
If you know me well enough, you would know that I'm an avid ramen eater. If I could, I would definitely live on noodles my whole life. But too much of anything can harm you and unfortunately my mom only brings in specific numbers of cups so I don't consume unhealthy amounts of it. I was all ready to try a ramen bowl at the restaurant but my sister advised me otherwise, and I listened, considering she had been there a lot of times before I even heard about the place.
So we ended up ordering bulgogi 불고기,(on the left) for Claudia and Abhay, and dak gogi 닭불고기, (above on the right)
for my sister and me. As our religion prohibits us from eating beef, we ate chicken instead. Although the people in Korea value beef over chicken in barbecues, they really love their fried chicken, so we didn't feel very left out.
We started our eating by ordering a plate of 떡볶이 (ddeokbokki, on the right) which is rice cakes in a spicy sauce. I haven't had that dish in a long time, but it still tasted as great as it did the first time I tried it. The plate is nicely decorated with generous amounts of cylindrical rice cakes smothered in a (not very) spicy sauce and then garnished with some parsley and cucumber carved in a flower. It was really cute! The cakes were pretty soft, but were really chewy. They were also really hard to pick up with my chopstick skills, but I managed after a few tries and dropping some on the table.
Let's talk about the barbecue, a famous part of Korean cuisine. When the waitress placed the plate down in front of us the first time months ago, I was pretty shocked to see raw chicken covered in marinade. My sister was given tongs and meat scissors and demonstrated how to cut the meat and grill it properly, before serving it to us. This time, I helped her (with my improved chopstick skills) and served the others.
Talking about the taste, dak gogi is just barbecued chicken made with Korean seasoning. It tasted pretty great by itself, and even better with sticky rice.
I also ordered a drink called Asian Mojito, which was a regular mojito with some hints of pineapple. I'm gonna be pretty honest, it was basically lemonade with club soda and a bunch of ice cubes and a very generous amount of mint. There were more ice cubes than the actual drink which was kind of disappointing because I finished it before my actual meal.
Moving on, I also want to talk about the ambience of this restaurant.
When walking in, the first few things I noticed were the framed and autographed jerseys of some Korean soccer players, geisha dolls on the drinks bar and the sushi bar. I also really liked the Japanese theatre masks they had hung above some booths. There was also a framed painting of cherry blossoms above our booth, and the lights that hung above our table were modernized Japanese pendant lamps. I really liked the vibe that was created because of the bamboo plants littered around the room as well as the embroidered flags on the sushi bar. It felt like a modern mix of East Asia.
The service at the restaurant was surprisingly fast and the waiters were really nice. They seemed to be well informed about dishes that any of us had questions about any ingredients and also were mindful about any allergies, something many servers forget to do, so I was very impressed.
Before ending my post, I wanted to share my progress with Korean over December. We recently had a winter break of two weeks and I'm going to be honest, I didn't do much because I wanted to spend time with my sister. So instead of doing my usual notebook spread and KLEAR textbook worksheets, I used a new app called Duolingo. This application previously only catered to learning European languages such as Spanish, German or French, but recently they started creating courses for Asian languages as well, now having lessons for Korean, Japanese, Chinese and one in progress for Hindi.
(My friend Sebastian is also using this app but he is learning Japanese, check out his blog here)
I would highly recommend this app because it really helps hearing how each letter is pronounced, because there are many that sound very similar. There are also a lot of activities to do so you understand sentence structure.
I'm super thankful that Korean and Hindi have basically the same sentence structure. Like the picture on the left displays "The man swims to the house", in Korean and Hindi it is "The man to the house swims." This is because to form a sentence you say Subject+Object+Verb.
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☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・.Manya's Monthly Suggestions。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆
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Dramas/Movies
This drama is about a girl who hides her supernatural strong abilities but can't do the same with her feelings for her childhood crush. She gets hired as a bodyguard for the CEO of a successful company, which causes a love triangle to form. On top of that, there is a murderer who is targeting the women of her neighborhood, and after multiple attacks, she decides to take it in her own hands to track him down.
(I have two episodes left of this, but I really loved this drama so far. It's a mix of romance, comedy and super suspenseful.)
This drama is about an unsuccessful female prosecutor trainee who gets falsely accused of being a killer. After an awkward encounter with her mentor, they work together to track down the real killer who has amnesia and can't seem to forget about hunting them down. Obstacles in the way are the mentor's ex girlfriend who is desperate to get back into his life after trying to get with his best friend when they were co-workers and good friends, as well as the vengeful ex-boss of the mentor who ruined his reputation after losing a case purposefully to save his trainee.
(I also haven't finished this drama because I didn't have time but I did successfully get Abhay into this as well. We really love this drama because the lead actor Ji Changwook is realllllly attractive. Besides that, the storyline is not cliche at all and we really enjoyed the mix of romance and action. A fair amount of tears were also shed.)
I'm going to be honest, I only watched this movie because it has a member from one of my favorite KPOP groups, Do-Kyungsoo of EXO. This movie is about a former Judo medalist who had to stop after a certain championship accident that caused him to go blind. His older step brother, who ran away from home long ago and ended in jail, uses his brother's disability as an excuse for parole. But after spending so much time apart, there is a lot of conflict between the siblings about the passing of their parents as well as financial issues. Albeit the differences, over time they find each other supporting each other, and the older brother (Hyung) manages to get the younger one (Doengsaeng) back into Judo just in time for the Paralympics, but keeps a secret from him about his medical condition. (This was really great, made me appreciate my sister's existence just by a little bit. Also wow Kyungsoo looks reAlly good in this. 10/10 would watch again and cry on the plane like I did when I saw it the first time.)
Music
4) Go Go by BTS
7) IT G MA by Keith Ape (swearing in this one rip)
11) You Are by GOT7
Also! My friend Sahej is learning dances to KPOP songs so if you want to see her great dance performance to Gashina by SUNMI (#1 on the list above), here is her blog!
Wow that was a long post but thats all for now!
(PSA-STOP SLEEPING ON GOT7, ASTRO AND WANNA ONE, ITS 2018 PEOPLE)
안녕!
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