During our last family visit to Seoul, after our ski adventures at Daemyung resort, we had a couple of days and we had some fantastic meals. One such meal was this at Dakalbi street in Myeongdong area.
What is Dakalbi ? Well, it is a pan fried marinated diced chicken, with rice cakes, vegetables and the famous Korean chilli sauce Gochujang paste. There are lots of other condiments like soy sauce, garlic, ginger, some sugar and sesami oil. I think there were certain grades of the chilli sauce, and we chose the mildly spicy one.
The pan is huge, and they have various sizes, some for 1, 2 , 4 , 6 and 8. The server normally cooks the whole shebang in front of the guests, as in our case.
The vegetables are : lettuce, some cabbage, capsicum, onion, spring onions and some perilla leaves. There are the usual side dishes like sweet radish, kimchi, and anchovies.
The photo above shows my elder son Noel with my wife.
After 5 days at the ski resort, eating from mess trays, and communicating with the wonderful YMCA staff, we were all ready to try authentic Korean food, and this post highlights what a fun meal it was for all of us.
Since we were not too comfortable eating only rice cakes (tteok). the second serving was for frying with rice. Now, that went down pretty well :)
So if you are ever in Myeongdong Street, do make a beeline for Dakalbi Street and give this touristy dish a try. Its something for the winter to warm the cockles of a skiier' s heart.
