Dinner at a Traditional Korean Restaurant

Every Sunday evening Melissa teaches a sixth grade student, James, at his house for an hour. Last Sunday his family invited us to go out to dinner together as a farewell for leaving Korea. We were really excited about the opportunity since we have had very few invites to do things with Koreans...so different from our experience in Japan! This was actually the second time we have had dinner with this family. They had us over to their place a few months ago for a home-cooked Korean meal. They're such a great family!
We ate at Kyung Bok Gung Restaurant, which is by far the nicest restaurant we've been to in Korea! We live close to a university, so we usually eat at cheap college restaurants. The picture above shows only half the restaurant, which serves Korean food. It makes an "L" shape with the other half that serves Japanese food.

Frank outside the restaurant with James' family.

When entering the restaurant, the first thing you see is the chef preparing food behind a counter.

The restaurant had computers with games set-up to entertain the kids...great idea! James and Joshua loved it.

James' little brother Joshua (second grader), his mother, and father (orthopedic surgeon). Thankfully, they speak great English! The family lived in Japan for a while, so we had a lot in common.

Melissa with her student, James (sixth grader)
Dinner:

The main course of the meal was Korean beef BBQ cooked at our table. It was delicious and tender...the kind of meat that melts in your mouth.

Traditional Korean meals have dozens of small side-dishes that accompany the main dish. Going clockwise, the top left corner is a salad with kiwi dressing, next is tofu, then a dish of squid, and finally some sweet potatoes. These dishes were scattered all over the table for each person to pick on with their chopsticks.

These glass noodles are one of our favorite sides, called chapchae. They have kind of a sweet taste and come with lots of veggies.

Now starts for the interesting foods: This is a side dish of RAW beef covered in a red sauce. It's best eaten along with a slice of pear (the white sticks under the beef). It actually tasted pretty good, but we were hesitant to eat too much of it (for the obvious reason it was raw beef)!!

The other "interesting" food we had was soup made of congealed cow's blood. See the dark red things floating in the soup? That's the congealed blood. The soup was spicy and had many green, leafy vegetables in it. Believe it or not, it was delicious!

We had such a great time with James' family. We hope they'll come to visit us one day in the States.