Just in case you were wondering, one bottle of Soju contains 540 calories. That's like 4 beers. So to put it in perspective, you would need to walk about two hours to exercise it off. (Walking two hours with a soju hangover is not an easy task.) Soju originally was made from rice but whenever there were rice shortages, people were forbidden to make Soju. Alcohol producers the started to use sweet potatoes and tapioca to make an ethanol based alcohol. Overtime they doctored up the taste so it has a smooth, crisp taste that goes great with raw seafood and grilled meats. The world drinks a lot of Soju. 61.38 Million cases of soju were produced in 2012 with Korea consuming about 2.75 billion bottles of Soju a year. You would think that everyone would be falling over drunk in Korea, but this is not the case. The alcohol is only about 17-19% so a bottle won't wreck you (but two or more might.) Koreans judge how good of a drinker you are by the number of bottles o...

It's been almost a decade of living in Korea and it has been good so far. I guess it has been also ten years of getting older, making and losing friends, working, changing jobs, etc. It's life after all. It has been good so far and I appreciate the patience it has given me. At times I feel like a lost child in Korea but somehow I find my way. I think it was my lack of direction and naivety that has been my foot in the door.  Anyway, I need to get back to my roots and I need to be more real. I worked in a very academic environment for several years. It made me learn a lot and it is nice to be in school. The problem is that I have too much ambition and I like to see things happen.  Anyway, next year is exciting to me. I have a family that depends on me and I need to do well for them. Let's get real.  Also, I need to start focusing on my health. This is day 5 without a drink (I read you need 2 weeks for the liver to restore itself). I am making that effort and I have been ex...

                    There is a debate right now about Korean fried chicken. One group thinks it can be considered Korean food. The other group thinks that it is just western food. What do think about this? I believe that Korean fried chicken should be promoted as a Korean food because it is Korea's unique food culture, which led to the development of its unique taste and texture. The sauce, dips, style of eating, and side dishes also make this uniquely Korean. Chicken in the past was considered a boyang (endurance) food that was often eaten during the three hottest days of summer. Korea was mainly a farming country and when you work all day in the fields, you need protein to stay healthy. The problem is that in summer cattle needed to work the fields and the meat would quickly spoil. Smaller animals would be eaten instead such as eel, duck or chicken. But for the Korean palate, eel and duck are too greasy so many preferred the taste of ...

Hanuso During spring I am always on the search for fresh, crispy and nourishing bibimbap. Hanuso uses top quality ingredients to create dishes that will please the epicurean in you. Their Yukhwae (raw beef) bibmbap has fresh sprouts, various lettuces, julienned carrots and pears and more. With this you get clear beef soup, Korean vegetable side dishes and a steaming bowl of hot rice. All combined, it becomes a nourishing meal that feels like a bowl of sunshine and spring rain. Pictured here this is some abalone bibimbap. Although the abalone is fresh, it is a bit chewy. For those that love fresh abalone, this is quite excellent. I would say that Hanuso has some of the best bibimbap in the city because the ingredients are very fresh. It's more like a salad with a side of rice than a heavy bibimbap. I would recommend you make a stop there. Hanuso Jongno-gu Nakwon-dong 272 Ph#:02-739-9990 Hours: 11am-10pm Price: 8,000 won-18,000 won

After a long day on the road, I made it to my mother's house where she had a feast waiting for us. We had spinach, bean sprout salad, pan-fried snapper, marinated beef, ginseng kimchi, beef and turnip soup, and rice cakes. Oh, and egg battered fish and crab sticks. It was a great meal and it was great to have my fiancé and my mother get along so well. To walk off the meal we are at Beojusal temple at Songnisan mountain. It is truly great to get out of the craziness of Seoul. Happy Chuseok everyone! Dan

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    Koreans call beans, ‘Meat from the fields.’ A long time ago, meat was a luxury that commoners rarely had a chance to eat. So instead of meat, Koreans cultivated a wide variety of beans to supplement their diet. Beans such as black beans and peanuts were often used to make banchan or side-dishes, but others like wild kidney beans, white beans, and peas were added to rice. Red bean in a sweetened paste was used as a filling for rice cake desserts. There is even a bit of notoriety about eating rice steamed with beans. If you ever encountered some people that might have looked a bit unruly or dangerous and you suspected they might have spent time in prison. There is a way of asking them instead of asking them obviously. You could ask, “how long did you eat beans and rice?” If that person spent time in prison, they would know what you meant and might answer 3 months, 1 year, 10 years etc because a long time ago prisoners were only given rice while in prison. Now the most import...

Here is a guest post from Cindy Ung who is covering food and beauty in seoul at  http://www.cunggie.com/ Finding good cupcakes in Seoul is almost impossible. Sometimes the cake is too dry, sometimes the frosting is not sweet enough, sometimes it’s not even real frosting, but just a whipped cream that’s bland in taste! The best part is being able to find that one spot that “hits the spot” and sharing it with the rest of the expat community here in Korea. Sugar Daddy At the very top of the list is Sugar Daddy, a small shop in Itaewon where the baker is in the store baking and decorating as she sells cupcakes from the same table finally opened a café by the McDonald’s. This extremely small and cozy spot is filled with all things delicious which are not only cupcakes! Sugar Daddy offers cupcake sized pies, mini cheesecakes, fudge bars, cookies, and cupcakes of traditional flavors as well as all things crazy. Many of the ingredients used in the recipes are ordered from foreign markets a...

So...the doors have opened and we have had customers visit Brew 3.14π . Strangely though you never know what is going to happen until you open the doors. Construction takes a while and you can't really do anything until you start. Luckily, we had a good team of people to come and do the construction. It is also quite fun and our group all participated in putting the place together. There were little mistakes that we had to fix and all, but I really liked the idea of getting my hands dirty and building something. Everyday we were working, all the neighbors would stop in and look. Most of the times they just glanced and walked away. Others would poke their heads in and ask what we were doing. The landlord was a frequent visitor because she was very curious about what was happening to her building. I don't think she expected to get tenants like us because her little first floor shop was now something very different than what she expected. I think she thought we were building a li...

Owning a small bar in Korea means that you have to keep the beer lines clean. I have been told to use a couple different solutions to do it. I was concerned about how to make a hand pump and I am not technically advanced enough to make one. I learned a trick from our beer supplier (craftworks). They rinse out their beer taps and fill it up with hot water and rinse it through the lines. But I am tempted to build my own hand pump cleaner like here.   I found that boiling hot water works for now because my shop is new, this is a quick fix. However, I have read that over time the yeast left in the line and there is something called beer stone that can ruin the taste of the beer. I have been looking at some commercial solutions such as Desana Max  but it can be quite pricey (about 5 USD a packet plus shipping). I have ordered it and once it arrives I will give it a try. But I need a solution to clean now so I have been looking at some DIY solutions. One involves using lemon juice and baking...

                If you are looking for a good time on Thursday Nights, then check out Full Moon. From 9-10pm they have free drinks. Yep, they have an open bar from 9-10pm. They also have some great DJs like DJ Kevin Boyd and Guyvr. Check it out. Disclaimer: This was sent from a friend who asked me to share this with the readers of Seoul Eats. Seoul Eats did not receive any compensation.

                                                                                                                          I love berries. I mean I think most people do, right? They are delicious and I feel I get a lot of energy after eating them. I have to say that my favorite berry is blueberry. When I traveled to Nova Scotia I ate and drank many many pounds of those berries. It's not just because of the taste, I think there is something in them that makes me crave the berry- it's like there is something in the berry that my body needed so I have to consume as much as possible. Recently, our company  in conjunction with the Korea Culinary Tourism Association (KoCTA ) is working with...

I have a pretty great job, I must say. I get to travel all over the country with great people and eat excellent food. Yesterday was a particularly fun day because I got to send the day with the Estrada Family and we went to Yongin's Dramia. From Seoul it took about 1.5 hours. Luckily, we had my friend Kyung as our driver so we were able to drive in comfort. It's one of the places that is quite difficult to get to unless you have transport. You can get there by bus, but if you are unfamiliar with Korea , it could be a bit difficult. Entrance fee is about 7,000 won. So for those crazy about Korean dramas-especially the historical ones such as Daejanggum and Queen Seondeok, Isan, Jumong, and Dong Yi this is definitely the place to see. It was recently reopened and you can see the amazing historical buildings which are the sets of some of Korea's most famous dramas. I think that it is actually better than some of the palaces because you can see everything from recreated villa...

I so want to hulk out right now because Google Korea doesn't make any sense. IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE! In order to pay for google adwords, you have to use IE6 with active x using a windows XP machine. WTF. Is this 2005? Actually, I gave up on Google Adwords years ago because of this very issue. But... Recently, we had some smart students from Seoul National University approach us and they wanted to advertise our company using adwords for a contest they were entering. We were like sure...great! After we saw that our bookings did go up a bit, we realized that it wasn't a bad advertising option and we even hired the student to work for us. At first we didn't have a problem adding money but the second time, because we upgraded our machines, we found out that we couldn't add money anymore. So...then I tried calling them on their contact number. No, answer.   We tried emailing them and we got a detailed email in Korean. My coworkers and I tried to follow the instructions. Th...

Korean people have some very interesting food superstitions. On different occasions, they have a food to match that will enhance a person's luck or prepare them for an important life event. One very important life event are exams and tests and there are many food superstitions surrounding it. The single most important event in a student's life is the soonyeon or the college entrance exams. It is a test that happens only one day a year and the entire city starts later just to make sure students makes it to the test on time. If students are running late, police officers will even drive tardy students to the school. It is a test that takes years to prepare for. For this test, it is all about memorization or having the answers stick in the student's heads. Some students will go so far as to not wash their hair for many days because they don't want the answers to fall out of their heads. Students will also avoid slippery foods during this time. Noodles are avoided and so is ...

For years as a food writer, I had been asked about food trends in Korea and what I thought were the best restaurants. In Korea, food trends seem to be constantly changing and there are those that come up with an interesting dish that gets everyone's attention, but often don't have the legs to last, or what happens is that others copy what that restaurant did and that place becomes irrelevant. From my experience, working in restaurants and running a restaurant are both risky. In America, I worked in restaurants as a dishwasher, server, cook, bartender, etc. I also had a small catering business and I made some cakes for cafes. I have always liked working in hospitality and I guess, deep down, my dream was to open up a restaurant some day. At my day to day job, O'ngo Food Communications , I mainly handle logistics and I do marketing. These days, I don't do as many food tours as I used to because I have a good staff working with us now. I guess this made me a little restles...

                            My chef buddy, Akira Back, recently won an award for his restaurant Yellowtail.  It was picked by Wine Enthusiast as one of America's 100 Best Wine Restaurants. Good job Akira.

My good friend and the president of O'ngo Food Communications was recently featured in a video by Conrad Hotel. They did an incredible job of capturing the essence of Korean food and about what we do. Jia Choi is an exceptional chef and president of O'ngo Cooking School in Seoul, where students receive a hands-on experience and education about traditional Korean cuisine. Jia believes that food is art, and her video is a visually-arousing display of this doctrine.

  These last few weeks have been very intense and interesting. I have embarked on a new business with my friend Patrick (which I will be revealing soon). The food tour company is going well, but the summer heat and the monsoon has slowed some of our bookings down. Our company has grown in three years and it has let me meet some pretty awesome people including Judy Joo who is an Iron Chef UK and she works at the prestigious Playboy Club in London. She gets to meet Hugh Hefner and she hangs out with Bobby Flay and Alton Brown (whom I heard mainly eats canned mackerel to maintain his weight). I got to show Judy around Noryangjin Market and then Kwangjang Market. It was really fun to introduce her to all the people that work there. I feel like the food stall workers are all my friends now and they treat the people I bring there like that as well. It was a good, but very hot day of food but overall it was a lot of fun. Judy, it was great meeting you and good luck on your new food show,...

You just gotta love crazy competitiveness between the pizza companies to add more and more ostentatious toppings in order to create a sense of value for their consumers. I guess it is the only way for the big pizza shops to create higher margins (these pizzas go for 30-40 usd a pie). These calorie bombs look interesting but I am on a diet these days so I am not willing to waste a day of working out for a pizza topped with ribs, mayonnaise, different types of cheese and a steamed egg crust. I guess the way that Koreans eat though one pizza would feed 8, because of the family-style way of eating. (In my house we would order 2 giant pizzas and wings and breadsticks and soda to feed our family of 5.) Anyway, I was passing by Mr. Pizza to see their new pizza offerings. Their new pizza is the "Eggta" which is a like a egg tart in a pizza. The rim is streamed egg and below that they have lots of cheese like a Chicago deep dish and then it is topped with "real steak," potat...