Day 56 - Korea town

Hey everyone!

On November 6th we went out after lessons to celebrate Amy's birthday!

We went to Shin-Okubo which is Tokyo's Korea town.

Shin-Okubo is only 2 minutes away from Takadanobaba on JR's Yamanote line so it is pretty convenient for us. In fact you could probably walk it pretty easily!

We all like Korean food and a lot of the people in our group are avid K-pop fans so Shin-Okubo seemed like a great location to have a nice birthday meal!

Shin-Okubo has a variety of Korean shops including restaurants, cosmetic shops and even Korean idol merchandise shops!

One of the Idol shops we had a look in

Before choosing a restaurant we had a look around the area and found a few shops that we decided we would take a look in later. We were all getting hungry so we wanted to scout out a restaurant to eat at first!

There were perhaps less Korean restaurants than we had expected but in retrospect there were actually quite a lot!

We found a few that looked interesting but went with one that had a big bang theme to it. Big Bang was a favorite of many in the group, particularly the birthday girl so it seemed like a no-brainer.

It was pretty cool because we were placed in a special Big Bang themed VIP section that was for bigger parties. It was nice because is was a kind of secluded cubby-like enclosed area so it felt more intimate!
The VIP area had cute picture collages of Big Bang on the walls and a TV with music videos playing in the corner on the wall.

Complimentary side dishes

In Korean restaurants you are usually brought a few complimentary side dishes to go with your meal. This is always really nice because you can nom some while you are waiting for your food if you are not so patient and it's nice to have a variety of different tastes and textures to try.

Pajeon

We got a seafood pajeon to share. Pajeon is a savory Korean pancake. It is often cut up like the in the photo above so it is perfect to share if you are eating with others.

Kimchi fried rice

The food all looked really nice so it was really hard to decide what to order! 

One thing to know about Korean restaurants in Japan, is that they are a bit more expensive than usual. One dish usually goes above the 1000 yen mark so if you want more than just one dish, the chances are you will be spending around 2000 yen at least. One dish may sound like enough but if you don't order a side of rice then you may end up feeling hungry soon after as the dishes are often not very heavy.

My chicken, cheese topokki dish

I can never resist the call of cheese topokki. ddeokbokki, or topokki (쫄볶이) is a rice cake that is usually served with a hot red sauce, fish cake and egg. It is warm and chewy and the sauce is a kind of rich sweet-savory sauce, and with the addition of melted cheese it really is the ultimate comfort food (if you don't mind a bit of heat). However, I also found some of the chicken dishes to look extremely tempting. But this time my usual lost self was lucky because they served a chicken, cheese topokki dish! It could not have been more perfect! 

Are you salivating yet?

The dish I ordered came with the usual topokki sauce and extras (eggs and fishcake) but the sauce was perhaps less soupy and more of a glaze and there was of course the addition of fried-battered chicken pieces and some onions. It was served on a very hot stone dish and was sizzling away. It was delicious and would definitely order it again!

Hot pot

One of my friends ordered a Korean hot pot which looked really good. I love enoki mushrooms so it looked particularly tasty to me!

cheese topokki

Everybody at the table seemed to love cheese topokki so we ordered a dish to share! As you can see the sauce seemed a bit more soupy and more substantial than in my chicken dish. Often when we have eaten this in London I would eat the left over sauce with some rice. I can't get enough!

Birthday dessert!

As it was Amy's birthday the waiters brought out a special dessert. They put on cute little head bands and sang the birthday song! They then gave us some funny headbands to wear!

Birthday girl!

Amy's birthday dessert!

The dessert was really cute, they had lit candles and wrote Amy's name on the plate in chocolate sauce!
The dessert was waffles with whipped cream, fruit, almonds, chocolate sauce and ice cream!

It was a really nice restaurant, the food and atmosphere was really good and we had a great time. Being put in the secluded VIP section really made a big difference as well!

After the restaurant we all had a look around some of the Korean shops. There were lots of K-pop merchandise including posters and music CD's.

It was a really great night and I hope that Amy enjoyed herself too.

See you for now!