Korean Restaurant in MVD!

The "Good tasting" Korean restaurant.

My last post was on eating so I will continue the trend with this one.

There are times that we expats just need a kick in our taste buds. While the food here in Uruguay is very,very good and wholesome, it nevertheless is just your basic meat and potatoes and yes Pizza.

 For most foreigners (I duck as I say this) it can be pretty bland. For some reason this upsets the majority of Uruguayans when you say that their food is bland. I get arguments that not everybody needs their tongues burnt off with "spicy food".

I have yet to make any of them really understand that when we expats say "spiced"or "seasoned" it doesn't necessarily mean hot, peppery or picante. Sometimes just a little less watered down sauce-wise, somehow richer tasting than normally served here or at least a little more salt added would do and yes I know, too much salt is bad for you.

So now I'm going to sound like a real hypocrite and say that yes, at other times we expats also want a rock-um, sock-um, kick in the mouth taste and yes, that means we want something,"spicy hot!"


So here is good news and some bad news. There are 2 Korean Restaurants located right in downtown Montevideo!
Both restaurants are on a "competing" block from each other (on the same block!). The bad news is only one of them has a good reputation among expats.

On a face book site for expats, some expats ate in the "spit it out quick" restaurant and it had a lot of complaints about yucky food. The good news is that I ate in the "Good" Korean Restaurant. So I wanted to tell you which one that was.

If you stand next to the casino in Montevideo near Old Town/Cuidad Viejo, turn your back away from the casino, and you will be looking at the restaurant you want to eat in. (see the title photo of the place)

The second photo above that of a wooden box and metal chops sticks is an important photo, since a couple of expats I went out to dinner with recognized that box and those chops stick from another expats' photo online and so they knew, we were in the right place, the "good" one.

We had a sweet, waitress who spoke English (She was Uruguayan) she was also learning Korean. I wish, I remembered her name. I feel bad about that but it was kind of unusual. She said that the menus were only in Spanish and Korean.

The menu book had pictures of the various offerings. Since she spoke English we could ask her for her suggestions. We were offered our choice of steamed or fried dumplings. We choose steamed.

We ordered like we would in a Chinese restaurant meaning each one in our party ordered a dish and we all shared the many dishes together so as to taste the lot of them. There was a rather strange looking pink rice, I think maybe it was cooked with black beans? There were several other dishes but the table was filling up fast with little bowls and platters so I had to put my camera away and start eating!

We had to order "Kimchee", since we were in a Korean restaurant, that is so synonymous in our minds with Korea being the national dish of Korea. We were given a bowl of the traditional "napa cabbage" Kimchee as well as other Kimchee fermented dishes using other vegetables such as turnips, and seaweed.

The restaurant had a Korean family, eating there, always a good sign to show the food is authentic.

Everything was delicious and rich tasting but boy was it HOT! It was just the break I needed as I am now rather enjoying my Uruguayan milder tasting and yes less picante food. Tonight, I'm having an enjoyable meal of meat and potatoes and I'm taking it easy on the salt too! I did say that Uruguayan food was very,very good and wholesome remember?

Of special note, some other expats recently ate in the 'other" Korean restaurant and they LIKED the food, which just goes to show you, taste is a very subjective thing. To each his own. ¡Buen provecho!