Korean Restaurant in Salt Lake

Stacey and I decided to make a video of our experience eating at a Korean Restaurant in Salt Lake. The restaurant we ate ate was called Myung Ga. If you want to go and try it out here is the address 1839 W 3500 S, #2a, Salt Lake City, UT 84119

We really liked all the food and we had a lot of fun making the movie. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

Check the movie out HERE

Korean BBQ

To start out our food journey we thought we would start with our most recent experience. A few weeks ago we took a trip down to Las Vegas. While we where down there we went to a restaurant called the Tofu Hut (3920 Spring Mountain Rd Las Vegas, NV 89102 is the address if you want to try it). Don't let the name fool you they serve more than just tofu as you can see in the picture. We ordered the King's meal (something like that it feed 3 of us) Here is what we thought....


Stacey-the-Not-so-Picky-One
Before I talk about the food, I just wanted to point out my favorite things about the restaurant. As you walk in, off to the right, there is a wall of pictures and signatures of famous people who had visited the restaurant. Almost instantly, my eyes fell on U-Know's from the former music group DBSK. (Fan-girl moment of pure joy.) One other thing that caught my eye was the large screen TV displaying a Korean cooking show. Of course, I couldn't understand it, but I sure enjoyed trying to figure out what it was. I'm voting for squid, but for all I know, it could have been a giant piece of ginger. The last thing that entertained me at the restaurant was watching the staff greet the customers. If the person looked even slightly Asian, they were greeted in Korean and the staff rattled off a dialogue. If not, they were welcomed with a hearty "hello." I was so fascinated by this, but I couldn't help wondering what would happen if a person of Hispanic descent came in and rattled off in Korean. Would the staff have had an identity crisis? Just sayin'. I'm sure there some method they use, but still would like see it happen.

Now to the food. As noted, I'm not so picky, but that doesn't mean that I don't know what is good food and what isn't. That being said, the Korean barbecue was definitely good. I highly recommend it for all types of eaters. It was not adventurous, except if you cannot stand seeing meat cook in front of you. The flavoring also was not anything that would turn off a typical American palate. The side dishes were more interesting. My favorite, by far, was the kimchi cucumbers. There were quite a few I did not recognize, but tasted just fine. I did not try one that looked like a pile of squished marshmellows with random colored things in it because I was worried it would have onions in it.

Joanna the Picky Eater
For me, I loved this place. I don't like seafood, but I do love meat! I thought is was so much fun because they cooked the meat at our table, it was fun to watch. One thing that I loved was all the side dishes (just be careful and don't put a whole piece of garlic in your mouth, I was just trying to be adventurous). I really liked the side dishes, some of my favorites are the broccoli and cucumbers with seasoning on them. I am not sure what was on them but they where so good. The flavor on them was different at first, but not a bad different but I can see how some people would not like them. I say try a little bit to see if you like the spice. There was an egg dish, I am not sure how they cooked the egg, but it was big and puffy and so yummy!! One nice thing about the side dishes is most of them are refillable so you could eat them as much as you wanted :) Not on to the meat, I LOVED the meat, I honestly don't know what we ate except they where all types of beef. They where so good!

Now our opinion: Good to Go!!
We both agree what we ate typical Americans would like. There are a few things that might taste different at first but if you give it a chance you will like it. So if you are in Las Vegas or live by a Korean BBQ place we think you should try it, you will probably like it!

7 Monts is a long time.....

Sorry all of you wonderful people who where reading mine and Stacey's blog before. I can not believe it has been 7 months since the last time we posted it has been crazy!

Some good news is Stacey is done with school and has a new job so hopefully she will find some time to get back on here with me now. I have just been working, but that is no excuse because I did have the whole summer off and I didn't find any time to post. I could give you excuses but I really don't have any, sorry!

Something Stacey and I have talked about doing is writing more about the food of Korea. I realize a lot of people don't know much about the food there, I was one of those (just read one of my last posts from forever ago). I was scared of Korean food because I thought everything had fish in it and I don't like fish, but in the last 7 months I have learned a lot about how wrong I was!

Since Stacey and I both love food a lot, we decided to for the next month to talk about our experiences with Korean food. Stacey will talk as a person who is not a pick eater and will try everything at least once. Me on the other hand, as I mentioned before I don't like fish, I still am working on liking sea weed, I have some problems with texture (like ice cream, why does it have to be so creamy?) etc. I will rate everything for those who are more picky so then you can read the reactions from two different view points.

So I promise we will be updating more and more about our Korean food experiences. So keep checking back to see what we add!

제 이름은 조안나입니다 - My name is Joanna

Wow I can't believe how long it has been since we updated this blog. Stacey has had a good reason to not write, but me I have had no excuse all I can say is sorry!

As I have been trying to figure out what to write about I realized I haven't told about the Korean lessons we have been taking. We met a friend through the penpal website named Seong Woo and he teaches us Korean. He lives in Seoul and we talk with him using Skype and Yahoo Messenger. We are very lucky because his English is really good and he is a great teacher.

The first thing he taught us is how to read Korean (Hangul). When I was learning the characters I would get so frustrated because I couldn't remember what sounds they each make and how to sound words out. As I was learning how to read I realized that this is what my students must feel like when I am teaching them to read. I would sometimes get frustrated because they could not remember the sounds that match the letters and then I realized I have the same problem with Korean so I became more patient with them.

Now we are able to read most Korean eventhough we don't know what it means. We are starting to learn simple vocabulary and simple sentences. It is so hard for me to make a lot of the sounds and I have a hard time remembering the sounds. When I learned Spanish it was easier because a lot of the words were simular to English and the way you made a sentence was very simular. In Korean it is very different and I am still trying to understand the patterns the sounds make.

I enjoy learning Korean and Seong Woo is a very patient teacher. I hope that when I get to Korea I don't offend those I meet because of my Korean!

조안나 (Joanna)

Will I Starve to Death in Korea?

If you know me and what I eat, you know that I can be a picky eater. Don't get me wrong when I go to a restaurant I can always find something to eat off of the menu. There are many things I just don't like and I choose to avoid eating them. These are things like cake, ice cream, salad dressing (I know you are all scratching you heads because you didn't know there were people like me), seaweed and fish. I know what you are thinking, how can somebody survive in an Asian country and not like fish? This is something I worry about as well.

So I have decided I am going to teach myself to like seaweed and fish. There are many reasons behind this, first off so I don't offend people in Korea by telling them they are crazy that they like fish in the first place (it's like telling someone from Utah that you don't have to eat ice cream to survive). The second reason is, according to my roommate Catherine fish is very healthy and is good for your skin. Who would not want to be healthier and have better skin?

To understand why I don't like fish I have had to think back over my life and see where this all started. I think it was the first time I went to the ocean and a wave caught me off guard and I ended up swallowing a lot of gross, salty sea water. It was the worst taste I have ever remember tasting in my life. At this point I had never had any sea food in my life, but I had heard how good it was, so for my birthday I asked my parents if we could get sea food for my birthday. My dad was so excited so he found a good place for us to go and he helped me order some fish and shrimp. I remember being so excited about eating it I couldn't wait for the food to come out. When I took the bite of the fish (I don't remember what type it was) I wanted to throw up because all I could think of was the taste the ocean water left from when I was younger. I tried the shrimp as well and had the same reaction. That was when I decided I couldn't eat sea food.

Now don't get me wrong I have tried sea food since then, and Stacey has had me try many pieces of seaweed with different things to try and get me use to it, and yet I still can not eat it. I think if I keep trying there will come a day when my taste buds will get over the bad taste from the ocean and I will be able to eat fish and seaweed.

I know that fish is not the only thing they eat in Korea, I have tried some of their other dishes and I love them. I will have to write more about those in another post.

I guess if all else fails I can just say that I am part of the sharks club in Finding Nemo, I will tell them that "Fish are friends, not food." That should work, right?

Korean Dramas

I guess the theme this week is television. The first time I heard Stacey talk about a Korean drama I thought pass, because I am not a fan of dramas. If I watch TV it is a comedy (Psych, The Office, etc.) It wasn't until Stacey explained that they use the word drama in place of show, and that in fact the dramas she watched were funny.

The first drama Stacey had us watch was called You're Beautiful. To get us to watch it this is what Stacey said "So this girl who is trying to become a nun has a twin brother who wants to become a pop singer. One day his manager finds her and tells her that her brother had surgery on his eyes and they messed up and he can't close them anymore so they need her to pretend to be him until he comes back. The other 3 members don't know that she is pretending to be her brothers so it puts her in some funny positions."

When you hear a description like that how can you not want to watch it. It tuned into a nightly event to watch this drama. Jenny, Catherine, Stacey and I watched this drama every night for 16 nights. It was so much fun, and it was nice to know that most dramas only have about 16 episodes. It is amazing how much they can put in one episode. The other thing I like about them is they are clean and you don't have to worry about what you will see.

My favorite place to watch Kdramas are at http://www.dramafever.com/ If you decide to watch one here are a few that you might enjoy.

Boys Over Flowers - It is about 4 of the richest boys in Korea and how they rule their school until a new transfer student comes and isn't afraid of them. In the end she makes them all better men.

Coffee Prince - A rich boy who lives off his family money is forced to turn a run down coffee shop into a successful one in 3 months or he will be cut off from the family money. He also hires a girl, he thinks is a boy, to pretend to be his boyfriend to scare off the girls his mom sets him up with. It is very funny.

Iljame - This is a historical drama, Iljame is the Korean Robin Hood. This one is filled with amazing fighting scenes, and a lot of great acting. This one is a little more serious but it is also funny.

I hope that you give one of these dramas a chance. I do have to warn you though, once you start watching dramas you get hooked.

Korean Variety Shows

One of my guilty pleasures is watching Korean Variety Shows. I don't know what a good American show comparison would be to explain the KV shows. They are kind of a mix of our late night shows with reality shows, with a little bit of influence from the Japanese Game shows. The biggest difference is that you don't have to worry about any smut happening...at least in the ones I've seen. And, I hate to admit it, but I've seen quite a few.

Some of my favorites can be found on youtube. (Ah! The joy of youtube! It's almost up there with Google itself.)
Thanks For Waking Us Up -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCk-nWp_QDQ
Strong Heart -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DWZjoV_ztw
We Got Married -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL65Qdb5UPo

Of course, it doesn't hurt that members of SS501 have participated in each of these shows. (Fangirl moment over now) Watching these shows has taught me a lot about Korean pop culture and Korean humor. You also get to know the famous celebrity hosts (people like Jay Leno).

Korean Variety shows are super entertaining and do things that I wouldn't see on American TV. For example, where would you see a group of celebrities getting interviewed in a sauna and randomly getting shot with water depending upon their answers (Happy Together)? On Thanks For Waking Us Up, the participants have to put up with being woken up in crazy ways and never knowing when it would happen. Somehow, I think that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen here, but it is entirely amusing to me.

So if you need a break from American reality, take a quick trip to youtube and enjoy the Korean variety...show that is.

How to Get a Korean Pen Pal

"We are good friendship, ok!" -Kim Hyung Joon (SS501)

When you are learning about a new country the best way to learn the truth about it is to talk to the natives. Stacey, my sister Jenny and I thought about all the people we knew who might know some one from Korea to help us learn more about it, but the more we thought we realize there had to be an easier way of finding people. We decided we would look for a website that would help us find penpals from Korea. After some searching we found the website http://penpalwel.com/ As we looked around the website we realized most of the Koreans on the site were looking for people who are native English speakers to help them learn English. We figured someone was bound to write to one of us. Each of us created a profile and waited for people to write to us.

A day later we were amazed to see people had started writing to us asking us to help them learn English. My first pen pal was so excited when I wrote back because he had written to a lot of other people and they never wrote back. He told me he was going to give up trying after writing to me. He was so excited that I was going to help him he went out and bought a book on how to write to pen pals effectively. It made me so happy to write to him.

Now I have about 5 or 6 different pen pals who write to me. It is amazing how different my letters are to each of them. They teach me about Korea and their culture and I teach them about English and living in the USA. It is amazing to me how nice they are. When one of my pen pals found out my favorite genre to read was fairytales she went out and bought Korean fairytale books that are written in English and Korean. I know not every Korean will be nice, but it is reassuring to know when we get to Korea we will have some friends there already.

A lot of the information that we will be posting on here will be coming from our pen pals and other websites that we like to visit. We have posted the links to some of our favorite sites for you to check out.

South Korea and Joanna

If you would have asked me a year ago what I would be working towards in the year 2010, I know the thought of preparing to move to Korea would never have entered my mind. I probably would have said, working or maybe going back to school or both. Little did I know moving back to Utah from Wyoming would change my life so much.

It all started when I found a place to live in Sandy that had 4 other girls living in it. They all seemed to be a lot of fun and the rent was cheep so I thought, "Why not." The more I got to know my roommates I realized that Stacey watched a lot of shows on her computer and hid out in her room. Slowly she started telling us about the shows and they seemed funny so when she suggested watching one I decided what did I have to lose. Stacey chose the drama You're Beautiful. I was hooked after 1 episode and I had to watch more. Everyday after work Stacey, Jenny, Catherine and I watched this show, we could not get enough of it. Finally when we finished this drama I had to find more to watch, now when I have free time you can find me in my room watching Korean dramas.

While we were watching You're Beautiful we fell in love with the music, so Stacey thought this would be the perfect time to introduce us to Kpop (Korean Pop) music. The first band she had us listen to was SS501, we all loved their music right away. Since then we have found many other bands and we listen to them all the time. If you ever drop by our house and there is music playing, odds are it is Kpop.

The more I learned about Korea through the dramas and the music the more interested I got about their culture. I would find my self imagining what it would be like to live there, and it got me so excited. Stacey told me that she wanted to move there to work and I got so excited and said to her, if you go I will join you.

So now this is our story of our journey of going to Korea!

How to start an obsession! I give credit to Google.

Joanna and I have decided to dedicate a blog page to our obsession with Korea and to include all the information we learn as we prepare to go to Korea to work. It is an easy way to keep all our information in one place and share our knowledge with others who are interested in doing the same. We thought that it would be best to start now since we have about a year to go before our dream of moving to Korea will happen.
I must admit the fascination for Korea started because I was sick in bed one day reading an online manga (not Korean manhwa). I've always been fascinated with Asian culture from a young age, yet until last year, the only thing I knew about Korea was that there was a North Korea and South Korea because of war...etc. Back to my original story now.
So I was reading the manga online and googled the title I was reading at that time. Instead of the manga, google brought up the link to a site (i.e. dramafever.com) for the Korean dramatization of the manga. Never one to question the greatness of the google search engine, I clicked on the link. I was sick anyway so I started to watch Boys Over Flowers and fell in love with goofy story. However, there were a lot of pop culture references from Korea and slang that I didn't understand that confused me. I also kept wondering why the heck were they bowing at certain times and why did they keep saying "Oppa." That started google searches to learn more about Korea.
However, the clincher to start the Korean obsession wasn't the drama per se. It was the Yun Ji Hoo character. Yep...I became a fangirl of Ji Hoo. (I'm holding in the three pages of comments I could be making on the fabulousness of the character Ji Hoo ... so be grateful.)
In the middle of watching the drama Ji Hoo sang and played a song. Ever a girl to swoon at a good looking guy singing and playing a guitar, I once again bowed to the power of google and youtube to find out who he was. Ji Hoo was played by Kim Hyun Joong who is a leader of Korean boy band, SS501. I started to listen to his band's music (my favorites being A Love Like This and A Song Calling for You) which also led to my fascination with other Korean bands that youtube recommended. At this point, I probably know more about Korean music than I do about the current American bands.
My roommates, at that time, just thought I was weird as I switched over from watching American movies to Korean dramas and started listenting to mostly Korean music. Luckily I have several friends who have lived a couple years in Korea. I actually did not realize how many people I knew that had lived there until my obsession had started. And they keep popping up in my life. If that isn't a sign, I don't know what is. Thus the Korean Obsession was born which led to our decision to move to Korea for a year and work. Joanna will add her part of the story of how she became fascinated with Korea too.

Each week, Joanna and I decided to put up links to other blogs about Korea, comment about the dramas we are watching (only to practice learning and listening to Korean, of course...keke) and things we are learning about Korea. Super excited!!!!!