Miss Korean BBQ

After dinner at Pocha 32 a couple of months back, a Korean BBQ dinner was high up on my dining out list.
Miss Korean BBQ is a two-floor restaurant in Korea town which has various BBQ stations on every table all over the restaurant.
The wait for walk-in tables on a Saturday evening was approximately 30 minutes and we were seated on a wooden table with another party. This seems to be the rule of thumbs in this restaurant because there are always two BBQ stations per table.

With some advice from the waitress we ordered two different beef BBQs.
One was thinly cut steak grilled on a grid which gave the meat some kind of smokey taste. And typical Korean style we had several vegetarian, cold side dishes to go with our meat.

For our second beef BBQ the grid was exchanged with a kind of reverse metal pan: the traditional saucy beef was grilled on the pan while the sauce with glass noodles was caught in a rim. We had flavoured red bean rice with our beef and sauce.

Both dishes were amazing. The beef was extremely tender, had great flavour and all these side dishes were great as well – one of the reasons why you can never go wrong with Korean food. And even though Korean BBQ is a bit pricy you never leave hungry.

I definitely recommend Miss Korean BBQ – the menu offers a great variety of different meat, seafood and vegetarian BBQ dishes, service is attentive and the place is very clean. I promise you won’t be disappointed, both my dad and myself really enjoyed our dinner.

Pocha 32 – Korean restaurant

Many of our friends have been to exactly this restaurant and there is one particular reason why people go there – and this is call Watermelon Soju. It’s a soju (similar to sake) cocktail with watermelon juice served in a watermelon.
And you guessed right, this was also our reason to go to the restaurant Pocha 32 in Korea Town (32nd street, Midtown) as well. We went a friend from Singapore which was kind enough to be the “tourist guide” and introduced us to typical Korean dishes.
If I didn’t know from friends that the food in this restaurant is very good, I would have left as soon as I saw the restaurant which is located on the second floor above a dodgy mobile phone accessory store. The dining room remembered of a high school canteen with cheep chairs and round tables, and whatever I saw of the kitchen was questionable. However, the restaurant has a A – certificate, which means that its cleaning/health standards are as good as it gets.

We were seated 30 min after we put down our names and right away our friend went crazy with ordering food for 10 people (and it was only three of us!). Thankfully, one of the dishes did not arrive, so we only had to manage three dishes but one of those was a soup dish which is usually shared between two or three people.
Food was served rather quickly so there was no chance of getting drunk from the watermelon soju which we sipped happily from our simple cups (not glasses). On that note – the cocktail was really good and I am sure everyone likes it as long as you like watermelon. I mean, I am not a big watermelon fan but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Still, it’s kind of dangerous as you can hardly taste the alcohol which makes you drink it like refreshing juice.

The first dish serves was Korean BBQ beef.
It was served on a metal grid with some bits of grilled carrots and shallot. The beef itself was delicious – tender and it had this smokey BBQ taste. Lovely.

Our second dish was Boodae Jungol which is a traditional Korean soup dish. We had the richest one which contained kimchi, spam, hotdog, pork, ramyun noodle, rice cake, mushroom, tofu, assorted veggies and melted cheese on top. It was really good and spicy, but a bit messy to eat with sticks and these Asian spoons.

The third dish was Korean veggie pancakes which were similar to potato rostis but instead of potatoes they used a different kind of vegetables, and it was served with some kind of soy sauce. Very nice.

As mentioned earlier, the Korean rice cakes did not arrive for a while, so we decided to cancel the order because of the mountain of food which was on our table already. And oh, don’t forget to sip your watermelon soju – which was plenty as well (I guess usually 6 people share this filled up watermelon which costs $30).

Even though I was a bit skeptical at first, the food exceeded my expectations and every dish was delicious. Even though ambiance (and also service) is not the best, it is worth having dinner this place. On that note though I have to mention that in my first week in NYC I went to another restaurant in K-Town which was just as nice, so I wouldn’t say food at Pocha 32 is much better than food at any other Korean restaurant in this area. I think the best part was simply that we had a person with us who order the most authentic dishes for the table to share and who loved it that we enjoyed the food he picked.

Summer in the city – one more time

After a busy week at work and at home with organizing future activities I was rewarded with a summerly weekend with over 80F.

We started the weekend with a Korean feast at Pocha 32 in Korea Town. My friend and I decided that the best we can do is letting our friend from Singapore order for us. However, I knew from the very beginning that he ordered for 5 people and not for three. So we had something like a Korean Hot Pot, Korean Pancakes, Korean BBQ beef and luckily the Korean rice cakes did not arrive on time and we were able to cancel those as we were already struggling with what we had on the table without the rice cakes. With the food we had a watermelon soju, which is what the restaurant is famous for. The food was delicious, and somehow we managed to finish it, which was hard work but a great way to start the weekend!

To make sure that I make good use of this amazing weather that weekend I put on my summer dress and went to Riverside Park which is next to Hudson River in Upper West. Everyone (meaning my American colleagues) was telling me beforehand how beautiful this park is, but since I am running next to Hudson River three times a week, I was not too impressed by the narrow park with river view. However the Boat Basin which is located around 79th street is lovely – it’s a small harbor (or maybe just some docks) with a café/restaurant situated at the pier. (Nothing we don’t have in Jersey, but still nice 😉 ). After the walk through the park, I got myself chocolate ice cream from the chocolatiers Jacque Torres. I can tell you now that is was really nice and rich in flavour which is true… but when I tell you it tastes like every chocolate ice cream which I get in Italy I wouldn’t by lying either..

Next stop was DUMBO in Brooklyn where an art festival took place that weekend. My expectations to see loads of great static as well as performing arts were not really met, as it seemed as the biggest part of the festivals was open-house arts studios as well as crafting activities for kids. One highlight however, was the contemporary dance performance by the dance company White Wave. Five pieces performed by five different groups of dancers with various nationalities were presented each hour and even though the level of technique varied a lot, each piece was interesting to watch.

On Sunday I started early to get another item from my bucket list – going for a run in Central Park.
And that was an adventure. Instead of 50 min it took me 90 min to get to Central Park, and by the time I was finally able to start running my motivation was very low. It did not help that the path went uphill right at the beginning. After 50 min and successfully ticking this item from my bucket list I can say that running in Central Park is overrated. There is a lot of traffic (and by traffic I mean other runners, walkers, dogs and cyclists) and the paths are ok (I crossed Central Park from the north end to the south end and made a loop around the reservoir in the middle of the park) but not as beautiful as the view I have when going for a run in Newport.

After getting all sweaty I decided to walk from the south end of Central Park (59th street) to the PATH station (33rd street) where I can get the train to NJ, instead of taking the subway to 33rd. Yeah.. remember when I wrote that it feels wrong to were blue jeans in Manhattan – now we got a whole new dressing experience: sweaty t-shirt and running shorts. But you know what? I figured as long as you walk with your head held high and the New York attitude – as if you own the world – you are just fine. 😉

Being totally exhausted, I received an invitation to go to Upper East for dinner and comedy, so off I went on another 50 min commute after two cups of coffee. We had dinner at an Latin American restaurant were we shared empanadas filled with minced beef as an appetizer. As second course I had four baked plantains dumplings (I’d rather say they were baskets) one filled with minced beef, one with chicken, one with shrimp and one with pulled pork. I never had a comparable dish and I enjoyed the different spices used in each filling. After grabbing candy at Dylan’s Candy Bar (they have a wall full of PEZ!) and walking around for a while to kill time we went to  Dangerfield’s Comedy Club.
I have never been to a comedy club so I can’t say how things work in any other city, but in NYC you have to get a ticket (which is rather cheap between $10 and $20) but then you are required to get two drinks each, which is how the club actually earns money. I do think that this is a fair offer, until I saw the prices. Holly Molly, two (tiny) glasses of Pinot Grigio – $23. The bottles of wine I buy at the store are cheaper than those two glasses. Anyway, this is not the reason why we went to that place anyway.
Thanks to our walk we were seated in the very back of the room with a small but mixed audience (groups of guys/girls, families, (married) couples, fuck-buddies (yap, the girl did say that in front of everyone after the comedian asked about their relationship), singles, white/black/Asian people – you could find everything in this audience), and believe it or not, we were the only people who were not talked to/talked about during the show. *success*
Usually these comedy shows are between 1 and 1.5 hours long so I did not worry too much even though the show only started at 8.30pm, but 2hours and 15min later and after 5 comedians, the show was still going on and another comedian entered the stage. You did get your money’s worth!
I had the plan to go to a comedy club in NYC for a while now, but I was never sure if I understood the jokes, which is why I didn’t go until that weekend. But most of the comedians and their jokes where really funny and I had a great time.
Even though Dangerfield’s is not one of the best known clubs and is smaller than the famous ones I can recommend going there if you want to have a good time.