Dae Ji Gogi Jip and the Barbecued Duck

Seoul is a city of a million restaurants. There are more, I think. And going out for dinner is the national pastime. The search is overwhelming and as far as I’m concerned, usually a mood killer. It’s great to have your favorites you can go back to again and again. Being a regular, you also get lots of freebies. The “ajuma” (old lady who cooks/waitresses/owns the place), if she likes you, will mother you – dropping vegetables and unrecognizable treats in your bowl and forcing you to eat them, things like that.

So the place I go is in Non-hyun-dong. It’s called Daejigogi Jib. (spicy pork house)

And my favorite is Daejigogi-kimchi-turuchigi. It’s a frying pan fun of tons of stuff in hot spice. I’m a sloppy eater and sometimes drunk. There are aprons for guys like me.

The drink is a variation of Soju called “Mae Hwa Su”.
It’s another rice-based wine-type drink. It goes with the pork.

My true favorite, which I don't get to do very often, is to go out and barbecue a duck. The best restaurants for this are outside the city, in the suburbs - where you can have big fire pits and massive cookouts. For easter dinner, Sera took me to one such place and we bought a duck. It had been marinating for days. We cooked it up at the table and took a photo. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, or how to find it, but it had electric palm trees at the roadside. Sounds easy, but this is korea. No shortage of crazy electric shit at the roadside.