Chicken, Chicken MUSEUM

More pictures of chickens here

We got up very early this morning and went to Anjuk, for a walk from the guidebook that promised to take us to the Owl Museum of Seoul. It had been a most unsatisfactory guidebook throughout our stay in Seoul, and it did not fail to disappoint once again.

Seoul'd out

The day started horrendously; bright light was streaming into the room, harsh enough that I had to wear sunglasses to navigate the route between bed and writing desk, and my girlfriend was being sick in the toilet from the comedy wine that she'd drunk in 7-11 the night before. After I'd finished my account of the night's travails, we staggered out to a taxi and sped over to the Holiday Inn, to meet up with everyone from the night before for a bus tour of Seoul.

Our tour guide introduced herself with a string of syllables I had no ability to remember, 'but you can call me Jenny' – a name that bore no resemblance to the Korean that it abbreviated. That's different to Hong Kong, where people also have an English name that bears no relation to their Chinese one, but while the Koreans have names that are recognisably English ones, half the people in Hong Kong have English names like 'Banana' or 'Centipede' or 'Laboured Stereotype About Another Culture'.

Year of Eating Differently (109): Jin, Bateman Street

Another Korean restaurant, another dolsom bibimbat.
Curiously empty, curiously large - but then Bateman Street is an awful location - it must be where restaurants go to die from lack of passing trade.
Food was passable, but possibly because I went to see Nouvelle Vague at La Scala last night, and I'm desperate for more than 6 hours sleep per night, I feel deathly and thus the distraction of my imminent demise prevents me focussing properly on food.

Year of Eating Differently (89): Ran, Great Marlborough Street

Perhaps it's masochism, intransigence or me being just plain wilful, but whenever we go out for a Business Lunch, it's always somewhere new (to support this project) and it's also always somewhere that ends up being fairly unsuitable for a vegetarian. Almost without exception we end up in somewhere Korean/Japanese/Thai/Chinese where they've refined eating meat to an art form. Ran even has the somewhat intimidating rubric on the bottom of each page of the menu: "All items can be requested in a vegetarian version. A 12.5% service charge will be added to your bill". This suggests they're fining the vegetarians for being awkward (fair enough) but we couldn't fathom out how they'd do you a vegetarian sirloin steak.
Never mind this bafflement. The menu is in English, Korean and Japanese, so I get to read a few katakana and realise I don't know what the kanji for 'chicken' is. So I feel a bit dumb. But what else is new? We had to push the waitress a little before I got any miso soup, but aside from that service was pretty good. That said, how could service be bad? Nobody told me erroneously that my order was far too big, there wasn't any beef accidentally stirred into my bibimbat, didn't get into a fight with any members of staff - I suppose a satisfactory experience is mainly marked by absence.
Steak and fish both looked very good and got approval from my compadres at this event, but perhaps the highlight (and this isn't to denigrate the rest of the repast) was the rather intricately prepared after-meal oranges.

Anybody who has some seed capital for my new venture, providing pre-cut citrus fruit for railway waiting rooms, post offices and local government offices should contact me at the usual address.

Year of Eating Differently (76): Assa, St Giles High Street

In that scruffy area behind Charing Cross road and just south of Centrepoint there's a ragbag collection of restaurants, including Assa. I was sold this on the basis it was a Japanese venue, so I was expecting some teppanyaki or similar, but it turns out to be a rather odd place - you go through what looks suspiciously like the front door of a house, into a small room whose only decoration is a massive painting of the Korean flag on the ceiling, and a few body parts that somebody has drawn in pencil on the wallpaper next to where we sat.
It was almost empty when we came in (12:40) but about two minutes later was full of people. Possibly we're good at attracting customers. Tea was free, so the fact that it was lukewarm is forgiveable. Being as it was Korean rather than Japanese, the chopsticks were incredibly hard to use, but that's tough. It was a cold day, and for some reason the deliveryman had decided to drop off all his boxes just after we arrived (ie at lunchtime when there might be customers having lunch and not wanting the door left open in the cold) but apart from that it wasn't bad. One slip up though - while one of us had a chicken stir fry that was certainly big enough, myself and my female companion for this meal were told that the vegetable and egg hot pot would be too big for one. Either I've a gargantuan appetite or this was manifestly not true, so although it was a decent thing to eat and warmed me through nicely, I had to stop off on the way back for something else to eat, which rather invalidates the point of all this. So it doesn't deserve a green blob.

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Year of eating Differently (2): Bi Won, Coptic Street

My reference Korean restaurant.
Conveniently close to Tottenham Court Road; seats about 20. I always end up with the hotpot because there's only three vegetarian options. One has to be careful to make sure the serving staff pay attention when you say you don't want it with beef. I was less than assiduous in doing so a couple of weeks back, got beef, and had it mashed into everything else before I could protest.
But, that aside, it's good warming food. And they give you orange segments afterwards. I like oranges. Can't really say more because I'm bereft of intelligence today.