Last night I went to Hanchu Chicken and the meal was epic. The stuffed and fried chilies and crispy chicken was simply orgasmic. Totally recommend you all make a stop there in Seoul. 

    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...

After fighting forever with wordpress, I have decided to start up a personal blog so I can get my ideas out faster. It is named after me, but by a nickname that my friend Maggie used to call me: Danimal. So...this is just a personal blog where I will be able to write about whatever I'd like. Who knows what direction it will go. Dan

I am at Crystal Jade today just having a simple lunch of dimsum, jjajamyeon(14,000) and sicheun fried rice(12,000). Everything was very good- especially the sauce in the jjajamyeon. We ate almost all of it with-spooning the leftovers into the spicy rice.  The rice was good as well-spicy and I liked the poppy shrimp.  The veggie dumplings were just ok(6,000). They were chewy because they put sweet potato into the wrapping but the filling had too much shiitake mushroom.  Overall, not a bad restaurant. It is a bit more expensive than regular Korean places. 

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...

Well, wordpress has gotten so bloated that I can't even use it. It takes forever to even get the write a new post open. I feel like I need a voice out there and that what I say is more important than all this other junk. I'm thinking of keeping Seoul Eats where it is right now because the site actually brings in some money and then I will refocus this current blog and later give it a cool name. I like blogger's simplicity and speed. I also learned a lot while doing the wordpress blog. I didn't need to make pictures so big. I think this is what ultimately slowed it totally down. When I restart blogging, I will make pictures smaller I think. I wonder if it would be best to just start all over again. Argh, the struggle. Come take a cooking class or take a Culinary Tour in Seoul! http://www.ongofood.com Join the Seoul Eats Facebook Group Page to keep to date with the latest events.

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...

I am a whorder. I figured this out when I moved last week. It took me about 1 week to throw away all my junk and a team of 3 people to come to clean out the apartment and throw everything away. It was shameful. Seriously shameful. My fiance said that when we start our lives together that she is going to throw everything away. I have already started doing that and I have thrown away a great bulk of stuff. In my new place I have mainly a desk and I have a floor mat for sleeping. I have some medicine and stuff that I saved from the old place, but it is mainly all gone. I think the next step is get my life really in order because the thing I trashed the most were clothes. Clothes I bought ages ago in hopes that I would lose weight enough to wear them again. Yeah...well, I am going to exercise more and I am going to climb up stairs when I can, but I need to be realistic and I need to find a diet that will work for me. Oh, tangent. Writing on the blogger platform is quite liberating. It ...

I don't know what happened with my life. Here I was a traveler to Korea that wanted to escape life in America and get a sense of adventure in life. Now 10 years later I am so busy that I don't know what the focus of my life should be. How did I get here? The one thing that has gone full circle is my weight and this is something I really need to work on. I walked up 8 flights of stairs today and ran enough on an elliptical machine to burn 200 calories. I still don't think this is really enough to cure 10 years of damage. I really need a change. Today is a new day. Come take a cooking class or take a Culinary Tour in Seoul! http://www.ongofood.com Join the Seoul Eats Facebook Group Page to keep to date with the latest events.

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...