Sanchae House: Dolsot Bibimbap Story at Visitseoul.net
Saturday, October 17, 2009This is my story on Sanchae House. It was published at Visitseoul.net. Please do me a favor and check out their site and write a comment under the story on their website. It would really help me (because they actually pay me to write for them^^). Here's the link for their website.
Thanks,
Dan
By Daniel Gray
Dolsot Bibimbap is one of Korea’s most enjoyable and distinctive dishes, and provides the chance to learn a little Korean – a dolsot is a stone pot and bibimbap means “mixed rice”, and that’s exactly what the dish is: warm rice, served in a heated stone bowl and topped with various vegetables. The latter vary according to the season and whoever’s making it – they could be throwing in cucumber, carrot, mushrooms, bean sprouts, bellflower roots, alfalfa, sprouts, egg, beef or tofu. You then add a bit of gochujang (spicy red pepper paste) to the rice and mix everything up before eating, well, almost everything. I recommend you leave a small layer of rice on the bottom of the bowl – this will crisp up during the meal and add a caramel-like crunch when you are getting near the end.
The menu focuses on popular, healthy Korean fare. You will find dishes like barley bibimbap; green tea bossam (poached pork seasoned with green tea); and an acorn jelly salad called dotorimuk. Now just because it’s “healthy” doesn’t mean it can’t be delicious.
A couple of minutes later, the main courses arrived: a bowl of bubbling soybean stew and the dolsot bibimbap. The bubbling soybean stew had chunks of tofu, noodle-like straw mushrooms, onions, and other vegetables. This soybean stew, called toenjang jjigae, is a very flavorful stew and a staple at most Korean meals.
Sanchae House (산채집)
Telephone: 02.755.8775
Price: 8,000 for the Dolsot Bibimbap, 10,000 for the Barley Rice set menu, and 15-25,000 for large speciality platters such as bossam.
Directions: Go up around Namsan Mountain from Myeongdong Road to the base of the Namsan Cable Cars.
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