Korean Convenience Store Patio Dining

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It's summer now in Korea, and with the warm weather comes patio fun! Just about every restaurant puts tables and chairs outside so that more people can eat, and oftentimes there are more people sitting outside than in. We wanted to do a video about this patio dining culture, but rather than go to an expensive bar or restaurant, we decided to dine at our local convenience store. Some have simple plastic chairs and tables, while others - like our favorite one here - boast wooden patios and umbrellas. Convenience stores in Korea sell everything, if you haven't seen from our Convenience Store Raid Series a while ago, so no matter how specific your taste, or what you're in the mood for, they’ve got it! So, this time, we raided our favourite convenience store to make the best booze and snack combos, all based on your personality type! Well, kindof...

The pairings are as follows:
The Macho: Beer and Dried Squid
The Classic: Soju and Shin Ramen
The Chic: Sogopple Cocktail (Soju + Mango + Apple Soda) and Fruit Mentos:
The Connoisseur: BokBunJa (Raspberry Wine) & Cheese Strings
The Martina: Sogurt Cocktail (Soju + Yogurt + Chilsung Lemon/Lime Cider) and Sun Chips
The Simon: Sogrape Cocktail (Soju + Grapefruit Juice) and Sour Cream Pringles

So check out our Korean Convenience Store Patio Dining video, and let us know if there's anything we've missed, any preferences that you have at the convenience stores!

Seoul Food Taste Tour

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We love Korean food. Love it! We can't emphasize that enough. It's one of our favorite aspects of living in Korea: being able to eat Korean food everyday. Recently, we were given the opportunity to go on a Korean Food Taste Tour, organized by Daniel Gray of Seoul Eats. And, you know, we feel like we should be getting more involved with events like this; they're great ways of getting foreigners in touch with one another, and it's a fun way of trying out new stuff. We've been here for two years almost, and a lot of the food we tried on this tour was new to us. Altogether, it was a great experience, and we recommend it to all who plan on visiting or staying in Korea. So check out our video of the Korean Food Taste Tour, and then Sign Up for one yourself.

Korean Street Food Wonderfulness!

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Yes, we're in the habit of redoing old movies. Call it nostalgia, call it laziness: frankly, we just look at our old movies and cringe. So we updated our old Street Food video to be a bit more comprehensive. Also, look at how we've changed in a year! Now you can watch us order Korean street food without merely grunting and pointing our fingers! We'll show you how to order, what to order, and how much it costs. If you're in Bucheon as well, make sure you go to the lady between Hyundai Department Store and The Mall. Her food is, hands down, the best we've had in Bucheon. So click on the picture above for our Korean Street Food video, or view it in different formats in the sidebar.

A bit of an apology as well: we haven't posted in nearly a month because we were actually making videos every week. Remember the Battle for Bucheon at Rhythm and Booze (if not, look down three posts). Every week we've been judging the contests, but - what's more relevant - we've also been making videos of every battle. We'll post the whole collection as soon as we're done with the finals video. As well, we spent a week at a Gepik workshop, either giving speeches about classroom management or helping with other things. Thanks to those of you who have contacted us from the workshop. Finally, we did a podcast over at SeoulPodcast.com, so you can hear us talk about Korea, teaching, Western Food, what's in our fridge, and other stuff from us that you wouldn't hear otherwise.

Korean Convenience Store Raid: Part 4

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Moving on to the last part of this miniseries, we review Korean Convenience Store drinks. Now, a while ago we made a similar movie when we tried Unique Korean Drinks. Unfortunately, we weren't sensitive enough in our reactions to the drinks, and that offended some people (which is why this series began with a big disclaimer that maintained our right to express our opinions). This time, when we review more Korean Convenience Store Drinks, we try to be more eloquent in our responses.

In this video, we review Banana Milk, Milkis, Dream of Tea, May-Wuan, and Soju.

The Banana Milk deserves a word here: surely, lots of people like this stuff. Unfortunately for us, it distinctly tastes like the medicine we had as children, so instead of enjoying the banana milk we were too busy remembering hospital visits. Uggh! And a word of caution, though: do not drink the Soju the way Simon drank the Soju. With that being said, we bring you our Korean Convenience Store Raid Part 4 - More Unique Drinks. Again, different formats are available in the sidebar.

Korean Convenience Store Raid: Part 3

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On with the show! Today we finally move on to the sweet stuff, now that we're finished all of our savory foods. We had some - well - interesting things to eat today.

Orion Cookies, Crunky Bars, Market Brownies, and something we transcribe as Yawn Yang Neng.

A lot of these have their Western Counterparts. If you remember our Korean Kic Ker Bar post from a long time ago, you'll know exactly what we mean: Kic Ker bars are really Kit Kat bars. In today's video, we've got Orion Cookies as Oreo Cookies and Crunky Bars as Crunch bars. The Yawn Yang Neng bar is something completely new to us, and it's - errrr - interesting. Anyhow, click on the picture above to see Part III of our Korean Convenience Store Raid: Sweet Desserts, or check it out in the sidebar. Also, if any of you know what these Yawn Yang Neng bars are supposed to be, then please tell us! They're so confusing!

Korean Convenience Store Raid: Part 2

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Now on to Part 2 of our Korean Convenience Store Raid: Lunch-y Foods. We were a little more bold this time, and we tried some of the heartier fare. In this video we sampled:

Kim Bap Triangles, Cold Cheeseburgers, Hard Boiled Mini Eggs, and Sausage Rolls of Lord Knows What.

Supposedly the sausage rolls are made of a pressed fish - or so we have been told - but it doesn't really seem like fish. We thought they were cheese sticks at first, but we were terribly mistaken. All we know for sure is that Korean people around us have called it "Sausage," so we'll take that for what it's worth. They're a big hit around here, and you can sample them at any major grocery store among the plethora of food samples. Anyhow, we'll stop rambling about these sausages while we still can: click the picture above to see Part II of our Korean Convenience Store Raid: Lunch Foods. Or just check the sidebar instead.

Korean Convenience Store Raid: Part 1

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We remember our first few days in Korea: we were confused, cold, alone. The wolves were howling at us, we were scared and hungry. We didn't know what to eat or where to go. So - for the first few days - we ate convenience store food.

If you too find yourself in this situation, fear no more, for we at Eatyourkimchi.com put together a mini-taste test of the good, the bad, and the weird foods you can find at your local corner store. We went to a GS 25, the omnipresent convenience store in Korea, and raided it for all its worth. We grabbed anything and everything new to us, came home, ate it or drank it, and recorded our reactions.

The result is this four-course video special. We'd post it all as one video, but it's just too huge. OMG!

Part 1:
We review some of the bagged goods, including chips and other snacks. Some things come in odd boxes rather than bags, but are located in the same section of the store.

Part 2:
We'll review the more lunch-foody stuff. What? Lunch-foody is totally a word. This will include food that's heartier than bagged stuff.

Part 3:
The deserts. You'll need to balance out all that salt.

Part 4:
We'll wrap up with a (sometimes) refreshing drink review.

For today's special, we reviewed six bagged snacks:
Jollypong, Egg Cookies, Goguma Gang, Homerun Ball, Corn Cho, and some generic Dried Squid.

If there's one thing we learned it's that you can't judge a food by its packaging. What we expected to be delicious was disappointing, and what we expected to be awful was amazing.

Please be warned: we have opinions! If we happen to have a negative reaction to something this does not mean - as some people seem to believe - that we are insulting Korea altogether and should be deported for our hatred. We tried to be as politically correct as possible, but - for the love of freedom - we have the right to not like some foods! Check out our reactions in our Convenience Store Raid: Bagged Snacks video, or find it in the sidebar instead.

A Foreigner's Mini-Guide to Korean Ramen

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Our experiences with ramen in Canada began in elementary school with good ol' Mr. Noodle, who pretty much runs the show for Canadian ramen. From there, we developed a deep love for those salty, spicy, delicious, and easy to make noodles, and craved something more. Surely there had to be more to the world of Ramen than plain ole' Mr. Noodle...

We found later on in life that if we wanted to try something imported (in this case, Ramen) we'd hit K-town (Korea Town: Christie Pitts/North York) or J-town (Japan Town: Markham). We thought that this would be an accurate representation of the Ramen scene in Korea. When we arrived in Korea, though, we were floored. We're serious when we say that there is an entire gigantic aisle dedicated to all types of ramen in the grocery store, enough ramen to fill our apartment. Oh the joy! Image us spinning in a meadow holding a ramen bowl happily. Yeah.

Anyhow, since we've always wanted to make a cheesy infomercial like video, we decided to do it with ramen as the star. We picked out 8 random noodle bowls that we had never tried, and called up our friends to do a taste test. The candidates:

-Jajang Bokki
-Ramen Bokki
-95 Cal
-Salee Gomtang
-"Well-Being" Ramen (aka Sudden Attack)
-Spaghetti Ramen
-Cheese Ramen
-Udung (which is different than ramen, but still hot water added to dry noodles)

What we had in the end is what we hope to be the Foreigners' Mini-Guide to Korean Ramen. Seven foreigners tasted, rated, and ranked the ramen, so that, hopefully, other foreigners here in Korea will have an idea of what's good and what's bad in their ramen aisle. Sure, our tastes are different than a Korean's tastes, which is why we made this video, SO PLEASE DON'T CONSIDER US INSULTING AND INFIDELS FOR NOT LIKING THE SAME RAMEN AS YOU. With that in mind, click on the picture above for our Foreigners' Guide to Korean Ramen, or click on the sidebar for different formats.

More Korean Ice Cream

A while ago we made a post about the awesomeness of Korean Ice Cream. Just when we were finally comfortable with it, we discovered another kind of ice cream that is so much more awesome than before. Talk about ingenuity! We wish we had ice cream like this back in Canada. We took this movie with our friend Chong-Won (spelling?) in the cafeteria of Bucheon's Aiins World, but you can find this ice cream at any GS25 or any other convenience store in Bucheon. Click the picture to see just how awesome the ice cream is, or click here for our video on Korean Ice Cream, Part II. Also, if you're having difficulty with QuickTime movies, check out our YouTube page instead.

Odd Korean Beverages

There are a few unfortunate people we know who hate Korean food and can't break out of their North American eating habits. It's for people like this that we feel most sorry, because we're finding so many exciting things to eat and drink here in Bucheon, Korea, and it's a shame that they can't be as excited as we are. In fact, we would assume that most people watching this video would be grossed out, just as we were before we tried these drinks out. What we have here is a video of some of the weird drinks that Bucheon has to offer. After all, we can make lots of videos about weird Korean food and strange Korean restaurants, but how often do you see videos about weird Korean drinks?

In this video you'll see a bunch of stuff that you probably haven't seen before; we've got some sweetened Barley Milk, nostalgic Rice Drink, pulpy Aloe juice, and more! Just about everything we drank was really intimidating before we tried them, and required a lot of courage before we took the plunge. Though they're not especially delicious, we can't honestly say that they're disgusting. They're just sweet - very sweet - because it seems that everything in Korea is twice as sweet as it would be in the rest of the world. We definitely won't be drinking these things again. This doesn't go to say, though, that everything Korea has to offer beverage-wise is gross; it's just that we're not particularly fond of the rice or barley or bean flavored stuff. Anyhow, check out the video by clicking Simon's picture, or watch our Korean Drinks video right here.

Korean Menus

Last week we made a post about Korean Food Courts and included a video about them, but we forgot to mention one thing about the food courts; their menus are completely and utterly awesome. Instead of having a laminated paper menu, they have a plastic replica of every single dish they have to offer - kimchi jjigae, sundubu jjigae, tonkatsu, kimbap and ramen, neng myun, etc. By every dish there is a tag indicating the price, the dish’s name, and its order number. This is extremely useful for foreigners here in Bucheon - and Korea altogether - because - if they can’t read or understand Korean - they can at least see what they’re ordering beforehand, and order by showing the cashier the dish number with their fingers. It’s really awesome, and should be implemented everywhere around the world. Click the picture above to see the video, or see what Korean Menus look like here.

Korean Sushi Conveyor Belts

You might have forgotten about the excitement Martina felt when we first moved to Bucheon, Korea two months ago and she saw a conveyor belt of sushi. We, however, have never forgotten that day. In fact, Martina has been eyeing that sushi belt ever since, but we just never got around to eating at one. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, we finally took the plunge. We were in Sinchon yesterday to take Spudgy to the vet to get his teeth cleaned. While he was being taken care of we wandered around Sinchon in the unbelievably scorching heat (we burned our feet, fyi). When we finally got hungry we went to the basment of the Hyundai Mall to eat (yes, Hyundai doesn’t just make cars. It makes department stores, too!). We saw the Sushi conveyor belt and knew that today was finally the day we would eat at one. Here’s how they work:

Simply enough, you sit down in front of the conveyor belt while different plates of sushi are whirled round and round. Every sushi plate offers two pieces of sushi. As well, every plate has one of five different patterns around the rim, and each pattern denotes a different price (the black and the gold plate costs 5 bucks, for example, while the blue one will cost 2 bucks). Simply take off a plate, eat the sushi, take off another plate, eat the sushi, and stack your plates. When you’re done a lady will come by and tally up the damage. We made a video explaining all this and more, so click the picture above to see it, or watch our Korean Sushi Belt video here.

Korean Baskin Robbins

Sometimes when you’re in a foreign country you have to bite the bullet and try weird and strange foods that you’ve never had before. For example, there is this totally Korean ice cream place that we had never heard of called Baskin-Robbins (check out the Korean website). It serves really delicious ice-cream and it is danergously close to our apartment. It was our friend Mark’s birthday on Thursday (we met Mark during the Gepik Workshop and quickly became friends with him), so we decided to buy him one of the ice cream cakes that we have been eyeing for months but could never justify buying. The cake we bought was really cool looking with what we thought were pink marshmallows on top, but were actually ice cream squares. Needless to say the cake was delicious, but the combination of flavours was a bit odd: the top flavour was cherry ice cream, the side was cookies and cream, and the inside was pistachio. Besides the odd flavours, what’s really cool about buying any cake in Korea is all the extra stuff they give you for free. For example, if you purchase a normal cake from a bakery, they always ribbon wrap the box and put in a huge plastic cutting knife. We got even more stuff with our ice cream cake! Click the picture above to see the video, or see Korean Ice Cream Cakes here along with what we got with it!

Korean Coffee Shop Snacks

Ever go to a coffee shop and feel like having a snack with your beverage? A muffin, perhaps? A cookie? Maybe a sandwich? Here in Korea, people like having snacks with their coffees as well. The big difference is in what they like to snack on. You'll be quite surprised. We recently went to a Holley's Café here in Bucheon, right beside the Hyundai Department Store and the Mall, and we found some coffee shop snacks that are pretty out of what we consider ordinary. What's a bit confusing, though, is that - even though we've been to the coffee shop many, many times, we haven't actually seen anyone eating these. Anyhow, click the picture here to find out exactly what it is people in Korea snack on in coffee shops, or see the snacks themselves through this link instead.

Korean Ice Cream!

Ice Cream is a must with Korea's heat. Ice Cream in Korea is also delicious. Also, Korean Ice Cream is sold in special ways, with many special flavors and packages. And so, Martina made a video to let you know about this special Korean Ice Cream, in all its majesty. Click on the picture here on the right for the video, or just learn about Korean Ice Cream this way.

Goodie Bag

We were gathering the forces of darkness to bring you a giant entry of goodies! Food, Engrish, and Fun await you, so read on!

McDonalds


We have been quite adventurous with trying new foods, so we decided to try the weirdest looking place we had every seen before. It was called “McDonalds” and it’s bright neon menus beckoned to us. Martina tried a “Big Mac” and it looked picture perfect. However, she found it to be lacking. Perhaps because it was missing it’s Big Mac Secret Sauce. Simon tried the “Bulgogi Burger”. For an update on what Bulgogi is, check out our “Seng Bulgogi” blog entry. Anyways, it was okay, but a little too sweet. All in all, it was our most disappointing and meal so far.

Martina’s School & Her Coffee Adventures

There is something that no one in North America will ever experience. Everyday at 4:10pm the chimes ring and the students clean the school top to bottom. Some sweep, some mop, and some vaccum. Others will gather the teachers’ mugs and clean them, and afterwards they place them in a weird UV cleaning/drying/sterilizing cupboard. In the morning the teachers find their mugs squeaky clean and ready to go, as if placed by secret cleaning fairies. Gathering their clean mugs they fill them with strange tubes of coffee or iced tea. We have a hot & cold water cooler in our English office that is heated to the perfect temperature. I’ll post pictures another time.

I’m going to explain the coffee tube phenonmenom which is Korea. It is very hard for me to find a normal cup of coffee. Instead, there are aisles of boxed freeze dried coffee tubes, equipped with sugar and cream. The weird part is, even if it says “black” the coffee still has sugar. YUCK! I hate sugar in my coffee! At my school there is a cupboard stacked with these tubes of “black” coffee, coffee with sugar and cream, coffee with just sugar, hazelnut coffee, and iced coffee. I’ve tried all of them, and while it is very tempting to drink from the conveniene of a little tear tube, I can’t stomach the sugar.

In turn, Simon and went on a mini-adventure to find brewed coffee, and we landed in a posh little coffee shop that looked more like a little rainforest/tea garden. I ordered the “hand dripped” coffee. I had to choose my beans from a list of 15 types, and it took 10 minutes to make. It was the most expensive cup of coffee EVER at $5.00! Wow! It was good, but not that good. It came with little dutch butter cookies, a tiny glass pitcher of liquid sugar, and some warm, steamed milk. Check out the pictures here or click the picture above.

Engrish Goodness

For those of you new to the word Engrish, it is when any Asian language attempts to translate something into English. We gathered a few of these pictures into one place, so click here for the pictures or click the picture above.

Lots of Movies

We made a few movies over the weekend. The first is of Soju, the Korean liquor of choice. You’ll be shocked to find out what we found about it, so click here for the video or click the picture above to find out what we’re talking about. The next is of our weird experience with weird Korean pizza, in Pizza Hut of all places. Pizza here is really different than it is in Canada, so click either the picture above or here for the video. Finally, we’ve been planning for a long time to make a video of us riding our bikes through the park by our house. Martina strapped the camera to the basket on the front of her bike, and, voila, a new video. It might be a bit shakey, so forgive us if you can. Either click on the picture above for the video, or click here to see check it out.

Korean Bars

After a long days work on Friday, Simon and I decided it was time to go to a bar. That's right, we broke our normal, "hey, let's read in a coffee shop!" routine and went to a bar. Luckily for us we have a bar in the basement of our building, called the Liquor Cabin. Although the staff did not speak english, there were pictures on the menu.

We ordered fried chicken and a bottle of Soju each. Soju is the vodka of Korea, except it is dirt cheap. As in, 3,000 won for a beer sized bottle ($3) and it has 20% alcohol. It has a very sweet taste at first and then has kind of a black licorice aftertaste and then a gross vodka like flavour that makes you twitch. I can't believe how easily everyone was downing these bottles, because Simon was drunk off one, and I couldn't finish my bottle (it tasted too gross for me...). Our free appetizers showed up, and it was nacho chips with salsa and cheese, and peanuts. Oh, we were wrong, because it was really pizza sauce and mustard. Yup. You heard me. Despite the weird starters our fried chicken was awesome, we got a whole chicken and a half. We got legs, wings, breast, neck, everything for $12 bucks. It was too much for 2 people, but we finished it off.

Afterwards we went for a walk and tried to win weird toys from those weird claw vending machines. Tried and failed. And so ends our exciting night out. Click here for the video tour of our Korean bar, or click here for the pictures of it.

Korean Street Food

So here’s the deal with Korean Street Meat: It’s delicious, dirt cheap, and loaded with variety. In toronto, you have two choices: hot dog or sausage, and will cost you between $3-$5. Here, you can get a plate full of meat-filled dumplings, spicy sauce over it all, and a glass full of water for anywhere between one and two bucks. Deep fried shrimp tempura will cost you the same. A plate full of dok-boki, which is a rice cake dish smothered in the most uncomfortably spicy sauce, will cost you two bucks. Corn dogs will set you back one to two bucks as well. It’s all great, all delicious, and makes living in Korea so much easier for the two of us. To see our movie on street meat, either click on the picture above, or click here for our video on Korean Street Food.

A Closer Look at Home Plus

We told you last week a little bit about the Shopping Malls here in Bucheon, and made a short video of it. We didn’t go into a lot of detail with Home Plus, even though it was really amazing. Yesterday we made a longer video on Home Plus, just so you could get a better idea of how weird it is. In the video you’ll see how difficult it is to read stuff, their motion-sensored advertisements, their super awesome packaging, and their sampling that puts Sam’s Club to shame. Check it out at the Movies Page, or just click here to see it.