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| - I'd arrived in Chinatown to purchase the bestest cheapest computer keyboard I could find. Afterwards I met up with a friend in the neighbourhood. A beast of a man. A real eating machine. Not a glutton. Not a gastronome. Something in-between. Man knows how to eat is what I'm saying.
We were looking for lunch. I'm familiar with the neighbourhood and had lived there for years but left our dining selection in his capable hands. Once you leave a place you never know if your favourite place to eat has shuttered, or burned to the ground, or was shut down by health officials, or simply isn't very good anymore. You leave dining decisions to the locals, whether you're in a strange country or just the next neighbourhood over. It's common sense man!
The gastrobeast recommended "a Korean place. It's in a basement." Is it grody man? "No, it's clean. It's good. We go there all the time." Fine man, fine.
We wander down the stairs and straight into Seor Ak San. The dinner room is stereotypical Chinatown. Plain tables. Cold tile floor. Handwritten multilingual menus on multicoloured posterboards. Thank the gods they don't have plastic tablecloths. And the K-Pop. Thank the gods for the K-Pop playing over the PA. No Sino adult contemporary dreck here sir!
The K-Pop continued with our server. Young man. Handsome lad. Dressed like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, down to the fur-collared leather jacket. I'm slightly wounded he's not strutting around the restaurant wearing reflective aviators. He's quick to our table with a pot of tea. This becomes a theme for our meal - stunningly quick service.
We start with potstickers. Dumplings are the true measure of a civilized cultural menu. Don't ever trust a national or regional cuisine that doesn't wrap tasty ground up stuff in a pastry and fry it. Or boil it. Or, best of all, boil and fry it.
The gastrobeast has been here enough to have worked his way down the menu. Today he gets a sparerib soup. It comes to our table promptly and boiling hot before our appetizer is even finished. He hasn't got anywhere else to dump the rib bones from his soup and they end up competing for space with the dumplings on their platter.
After working my way through the multi-paged menu I settled on a Hot Stone Pot Bibimbap with Spicy Squid. A good choice. It arrives more quickly than expected and, like the soup, is sizzling hot. I nibble on the kimchi and other banchan that arrive with our meal while I wait for my bibimbap to cool. Then I tear into it with my metal chopsticks. This is the good stuff. I just wish I had some more cephalopod in my bowl.
I end my meal full and content. We talk about Kim Jong-un. A little too thematic but we'd end up talking about him no matter the venue. I let the gastrobeast have my leftovers. He covers the now crispy rice in hot sauce. I think he liked my meal better than his own.
I'll be back, Seor Ak San. May your Stone Pots stay forever Hot.
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