50 Best and then some day 5: delicious tripe

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I really messed up my itinerary today.

Besides all the eating I had planned for this trip, I really wanted to do some sightseeing around Seoul. Having explored a couple of palaces within city limits on my previous trips, I figured I should look for something outside but not too far away. Namhansanseong (남한산성) Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that's just outside the city, and it's only a short trip from my hotel in Gangnam. Since I hadn't booked anything for lunch today, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to go for a visit.

Well... while the park is open year-round, the palace within the grounds is closed on Mondays. So... I guess no sightseeing for me.

Instead, I met up with RAW Yeah for coffee this morning. He was incredibly kind to have picked up something from Foursheets in Hong Kong to pass to me, and we ended up hanging out for a little bit at Peer Coffee inside Starfield COEX Mall. As a lover of Ethiopian Yirgecheffe coffee, this pour-over from Haru Suke was right up my alley.

50 Best and then some day 4: I'll Remember You

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After our very big lunch, the Man in White T-shirt decided to accompany me on my hunt for cute clothing for our CCDogcow. I had seen a few recommendations for Café Bite Me, and their online shop had a lot of cool stuff, but unfortunately the physical location was mostly a pet cafe with some pet supplies. Most of the nice clothing had to be purchased online. That was disappointing.

My day got a little worse when I returned to my room at Shilla Stay Samsung to discover that the temperature was 30°C inside. Apparently the hotel does not turn on the cooling function in winter, so instead of lowering the thermostat to a more reasonable temperature, my only choice was to keep the heating on or turn it off... WTF.

Well, this made me somewhat look forward to getting out of my room for dinner, some 3 hours after the end of my big lunch. I thought there was an event I didn't know about at Vinho (빈호), a wine bar which had recently gotten themselves a little macaron. As it turns out, the Man in White T-shirt wanted to check out the place and simply asked me to join him.

With a name like Vinho, I thought there was some Portuguese connection to this wine bar. The reality is that co-proprietors Jeon Seong-bin and Kim Jin-ho wanted to name the place after themselves, so "Bin" and "Ho" together made for vinho. I guess that works, too...

The setup here - with a long, C-shaped counter around the open kitchen - reminded us a little of the old Florilège... which was where Jin-ho spent some time. There's a 2-hour period at the start of the evening where a tasting menu is served, but then it becomes a casual, bar-like service where ordering is à la carte. As the two of us arrived somewhat early, we would be trying out the whole tasting menu.

Clam - the clam came with mini cucumbers, oriental melon (참외), and pickled miyeok (미역) - the latter of which provided both umami and acidity. The creamy sauce was made with peanuts and had a slightly grainy texture, and this was meant to evoke the classic dish of kongguksu (콩국수).

50 Best and then some day 4: the temple of Hanwooooo

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I'm spending the whole day with the Man in White T-shirt.

He wanted to grab a coffee before we headed off to lunch together. After cleaning up, I headed his way via the subway. This was when I encountered serious problems for the first time in 3 days - both in terms of inter-line transfer as well as the train not reaching my desired destination. After switching to taxi, I managed to arrive at Nudake for the second time in 3 days... albeit much later than I had wanted to be.

Since I was incredibly late and we were running out of time, I just got myself an iced long black and kinda gulped it down.

Lunch today was at Born and Bred in Majang-dong (마장동). Almost 7 years after I first experienced the magic of the best Hanwoo around, I finally had the opportunity to come back. Except I'm not dining at the original "speakeasy" upstairs from the butcher shop. This is the newer, multi-story restaurant that owner Jung Sang-won (정상원) originally described as inspired by the movie Kingsmen before the restaurant opened.

Once everyone had arrived, we moved to the private counter in the basement. I had missed a group outing here in late 2019 not long after the place first opened, but at the time I was already so busy flying around the world for work that coming in just for a weekend - in the middle of an already hectic schedule - just didn't make much sense. What followed was 3 years of effective border closures for Hong Kong, and here we are.

Chef Min Kyung Kwan was taking care of us today while his kitchen team works on their upcoming collaboration with Dave Pynt of Burnt Ends. He wants to showcase the best they have to offer, but is well-aware that everyone here has been - and will continue to - eating nonstop. He has chosen to serve us smaller portions of each item, so that we wouldn't feel like throwing up by the end of our meal from being stuffed...

One of our dining companions very generously brought a bottle of Krug to share with the Man in White T-shirt. The rest of us became beneficiaries of this generosity by default...

2000 Krug, ID 313058

Galbitang (갈비탕) - the morel was stuffed with different types of mushrooms, and we also had finger meat. Gotta say that stuffing was really tasty, as was, of course, the soup itself.

Yukhoe (육회) - made with chuck tender, and mixed with oi gochu (오이고추) peppers. This was really nice, with a little fermented sauce that wasn't quite spicy but very flavorful, and worked well with the caviar and the umami.

Earth Hour 2024

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My 16th Earth Hour finds me in Seoul, as I had come up a couple of days earlier before the festivities that will take place next week. After a very long lunch today I had retired to my hotel room, and when the time came I decided to walk around the big block that is COEX and see if anyone around here cared about Earth Hour.

COEX has a ton of large, bright LED screens that blast out advertising 24-7, and there's one just across from my hotel room. Like all the others on both sides around the block, the screens never darkened.

50 Best and then some day 3: collaborative stuffing

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I decided to sleep in this morning. Haokofu and I decided to take a long walk after dinner last night along Apgujeong-ro before returning to our hotels, and that was a lot of walking. So... I was still in bed when the Great One went for her breakfast soup with Vicky Cheng. I did get around to having a quick coffee with her at Coffee Jinsim Bakery (커피진심베이커리). As we were about to have a huge lunch, I decided not to get one of their cute-looking salt breads and just had myself a hazelnut cafe latte. I expected this to just have a shot of hazelnut liqueur inside, but was pleasantly surprised by the presence of crushed hazelnuts and pine nuts.

A bunch of us piled into a taxi and made our way north to Onjium (온지음). We are joining one of the events of the 50 Best Signature Series, which sees Onjium host the Chairman (大班樓) from Hong Kong and Seroja from Singapore for a "6 hands" collaboration.

Now, the reason why I came up 2 days ago was to visit restaurants before the "50 Best crowd" get into town, and try out the restaurants' own cuisine instead of all these "collaborations". So many of these 4-/6-/8-hands events are simply different chefs alternative dishes from their repertoire, and they don't feel like real collaborations. I had told PR8 point blank that I wasn't interested in any collaboration meals from his clients, and most of all, I didn't want to run into some of the people who somehow always show up at these sort of events.

But... this is different. Any of the Chairman's collaborative events is worth attending, because Danny and the team insist on it being true collaborations - where many dishes actually combine elements from all participating parties. This requires actual thought and effort in planning ahead, and indeed, the teams for today actually got together multiple times to work on the menu. So... I'm always willing to make an exception for the Chairman's events.

Today's seating plan saw the same foursome that had sat through this dinner last October placed at the same table. I saw a few familiar faces around the dining space, but it was all good.

Amuse-bouche - we began with this platter featuring nibbles from all three restaurants.