Samgyeopsal

[pronounced ssahm-gyeop-ssahl] Pork belly cooked at your table. Every time I have had this, it has been a little different. Variations include types of lettuce leaves, ban-chan (side dish) accompaniment, and dipping sauce options. Goes well with soju and domestic draft beer.

Koreans love to eat this. It is cheap -- much cheaper than beef. There is also something very socializing about eating this food and Korean food in general. Someone always takes charge of manning the meat -- flipping the fatty slices to achieve a balance of crispiness and juiciness, cutting up the long slices into bite-sized portions, and pushing the ready pieces over to your friend's side of the grill so they can easily eat up. If you really love them, you could even put some on their plate. Koreans also never pour their own drinks. Dining companions always watch each other's cups to make sure they are not empty.

Oh yeah, here's the usual order of events:
1. Meat is grilled and ban-chan is nibbled upon.
2. Meat and leaves are eaten together.
3. Rice and some kind of thick soup is served (btw, there are 3 words for soup which describe varying levels of liquid thickness -- tang, jjigae, and gook).

Kimchi placed on slight decline to catch dripping fat juice.


Mid-cooking. My hands were shaking, was so excited.


Basic leaves with which one wraps the cooked meat and desired sauce/kimchi/garlic combinations. Sesame leaves are particularly nice with samgyeopsal.

At this place, the restaurant proprieter cut up any leftover meat and fat-covered kimchi to make a most delicious fried rice on the grill, topped with cheese (!!) and roe. Nom nom.

Btw, three people ate and drank to their hearts content for about 20 USD.

Texas Pit Stops

After a few days in Austin and noticing claims of real Elgin sausage at every bar and restaurant we popped into (and there were many), we knew we had to stop in Elgin on the way to New Orleans, even if it meant eating juicy, hot, fatty sausages at 9am. WHATEVS.

Pit Stop #1: Elgin hot sausage, Elgin, TX

enough said

mandatory butcher paper with oil seeping through and hot sauce

Pit stop #2: HAMBURGERS, Houston TX

After doing some research by way of Robb Walsh, aka Houston hamburger extraordinaire, who very thoughtfully outlined three types of burgers: grocery store burgers (where they first originated), soul food burgers, and burger joint burgers--we whole heartedly knew we had to have some soul food burgers. Whats the south without soul food? Lockwood Malt Shop, "perfection on a buttered bun" or so we read, along with the words "look for the seemingly abandoned red building..." was, to our disappointment, no longer seemingly abandoned but really abandoned!

We relied on plan b (how familiar!), Lankford Grocery Co., a former grocery store turned restaurant known for their old-fashioned hamburgers. We walked through what looked like sliding glass doors of someone's backyard into their grandma's home with rickety chairs and tables on uneven linoleum, knick-knacks failing to let go of walls, and pastel-colored bunnies screaming sweet Jesus cluttering every surface top (clearly prepared for Easter) and and, thats it. We ordered two cheeseburgers (still recovering from pit stop #1) and a side of tatertotts. Although the burger was not as plump (aka not a 1/2 or 5/8-lb-er) as we imagined Lockwood's would have been, we could still tell the burger was made with love... or "soul" as they call it in the south.

Old-fashioned hamburgers, see?

Easter was really around the corner though

Damn that looks tasty, not the hamburger, I mean... sorry

Oh, and as I was taking a picture of an American flag hung outside, a man sitting on the long picnic table positioned on Lankford's driveway asked me why I was taking a picture of an American flag. Of course I immediately exclaimed, "because we're in America!" which to my surprise, he responded, "but aren't you from America?" WHAT??? I thought y'all thought we were from China or the Orient.

Texas Bar-B-Que, Beefier than it's Porky Eastern Cousins

The audit train had only a few days in Austin during an epic trip to the South, but insisted on enjoying some of the local Texas barbecue at least more than once. Austinites told us that the best barbecue is always at least half an hour outside of the city, and based on our two TX bar-b-que experiences, plus the help of some generalization, we kind of confirmed this.


1. Reppin' inner-city Austin- Mann's Smokehouse Bar-B-Que

The jumbo sweet tea sign may have contributed to luring us in




Inside: very charming

Pork ribs, brisket, cole slaw and turnip greens (the latter two of which consistently served as our only source of vegetables during the trip-- I am undecided on whether or not to divulge my resulting digestive adventures in conjuction with this food blogging.)

Mann's was pretty good. Definitely better than the barbecue in California, but unfortunately, we ate it after Cooper's (see below) and it didn't compare. Tonight, I have that Vanessa Williams song stuck in my head, something about saving the best for last.

2. An hour outside of Austin and into hill country - Cooper's Pit Bar-B-Que, Llano, TX

I can't get over how fake the words "Old Time" look in this photo. But they are totally real.

Pit boss; he asked for Jenn's digits

Succulent pork loin, tasty (but slightly chewy) beef ribs, and brisket like I'd never had before in my life. Sides: wait, who cares

There are a several things that made Cooper's mind-blowing:

The hour drive through hill country was beautiful. The first thing we saw was that amazing sign, and then we saw the pit. Of course, before all this, we had smelled all that hot smoky meat as we stepped out of the car and our mouths had already been watering for a good minute.

The dudes at the pit asked us what we wanted and then schlopped it directly onto a plastic cafeteria tray. They handed us the tray and pointed us inside, through a short hallway of hooded buffet carts that contained a paltry selection of room temperature sides (obviously not the main event here) from which we unattentively chose. By this time, we were foaming at the mouths, our minds on the meat laying sexy and bare on the cafeteria tray we clutched. The dudes behind the carts wrapped our meats in butcher paper, weighed it, and slapped a price sticker on it, as if it was deli ham or something. Whatever, by this time, we already knew that presentation didn't matter. The total was forty some dollars (for three people), a good deal for this much meat.


We anxiously dispensed ourselves sweet tea and spooned free baked beans and barbecue sauce into variously sized styrofoam vessels. We floated to our indoor picnic tables, which were lined with loaves of store-bought sliced white bread still in their plastic, French's yellow mustard, pickled whole jalapenos, hot sauce, and most importantly, paper towels. We hazily unwrapped the butcher paper, and ate, ate for-fucking-ever.

I will probably never have brisket anywhere near like that again, unless I go back to Cooper's. It was entirely unlike any brisket I've had at other barbecue places. Rather than sliced, it seemed roughly chopped, similar to some Jewish briskets I've had, this being more likely a result of it being cut into bigger slabs but being so tender that it just had to fall apart (how dare it!). The pork loin was peppery and goddamned juicy. The beef ribs were a bit tough, but it didn't matter much because they could be saved with the barbecue sauce, which was tangy, rightfully thin, not really sweet at all, and obviously not from a bottle.

Of course all the white people were staring at us three Chinese girls stuffing our faces with dead animal. Maybe they thought it was bizarre, but probably not, because they were all eating the same stuff that we were and knew how good it was.