Soul food

In the series of posts to come, Chocci will take you on our "I'm not hungry" tour in Seoul (run from 12-14 January) by Host Chai.

12 January 2008

6.30 am - J, E and I arrive at Hotel Chai, bleary eyed from the red-eye flight from Hong Kong. Attempts to open the door of Hotel Chai fail and we are greeted by our cheery host, YW. We chill out in the gorgeous living room of Hotel Chai chatting, trying not to wake the sleepy guests, J and P in the master bedroom.

I nibble on my CX lounge vanilla cake as J/YW and me debate whether to head out for breakfast at the "ox-tail" soup place. Sleep wins.

11.30 am - Everyone is awake. It's breaky time!

12.30 am - 6 pairs of gloves, 4 beanies and 6 puffy jackets later, we arrive at our 1st stop. "This place serves the best ox-tail soup and seafood tofu stew", Yewwei tells us as we follow him into a narrow alley. Although I usually can't eat much after a sleepless night, I am suddenly famished. After taking off our boots, we step into a little restaurant and nestle down at low traditional Korean tables with our feet tucked underneath us. "[We'll have 3 of those ox-tail soups, 2 seafood tofus, 1 bibimbap, oh and maybe some raspberry wine]", YW quickly rattles off in Korean.

In no time at all, sizzling hot black pots arrive at our tables together with the kimchi and other local side dishes. Ignoring the sounds of what appears to be two cats attempting to kill each other in the floor above (the owner shrugged as we looked at her enquiringly), we quickly stuck our metal spoons and chopsticks into the pots of goodies. The slightly spicy oxtail soup was stewed to perfection, the beef just melting off the bone ... though the best part was probably eating the oxtail off the bone with our fingers. You need to use the fingers to get to the good bits! The seafood tofu soup was spicy and all the ingredients infused with the flavour. The bibimbap was good but left me wondering - where are the crunchy bits on the bottom?

Verdict: 4 out of 5. My only regret is that we had to leave some room for the rest of the meals to come.

(Depicted left is our mate J, slurping up the goodness of the oxtail bones - picture has been masked to protect his identity.)