Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Day 6.006: Comfort food

I skipped breakfast, but made it to work. At lunchtime, feeling OK but not yet really hungry we called for a sandwich. That took us to Paris Baguette (it's pronounced Paree in the Korean transliteration). I was amused to see their sign with the tagline "We're bake". Not quite sure where they were going there.

As we were leaving, our hosts informed us that after an illness such as ours they would usually have soup and rice, so for dinner we went back to one of last week's lunch locations: 서올 삼계탕 (Seoul Chicken Ginseng Soup).

This is a great experience. They only serve this dish (along with their own selection of side dishes and condiments). It comes as an individual serving in a very hot bowl - a small whole chicken in still boiling broth. The first job is to break up the carcass with a large spoon revealing that it is stuffed with rice, ginseng root, plums and water chestnuts, which then spill out making an excellent soup with the chicken meat. Eating it is a gradual process of ladling out into a cooling bowl, picking bones out, scooping broth, rice and chicken and occasionally picking out a tasty morsels with chopsticks.

I don't know that it helped our recovery, but it certainly didn't hurt!

2 comments:

  1. I tried speaking in French in Paris Baguette, didn't help. There seems to be one on every street corner.

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    Replies
    1. Yes - vying with Twosome Place as Korea's answer to the ubiquity of Starbucks. In fact, we set off to go there for lunch and soon realised that we were going to a different one than the one I thought!

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