Mad Ramen Bar

To continue from my previous post about food in Ipoh, here is another restaurant we tried, called Mad Ramen Bar.

It is near the famous Concubine Lane. 

I split this out into a separate post because there are photos of more than just the food.

The restaurant was empty when we arrived for a rather late lunch at around 1:30pm. I guess most tourists would go for Ipoh specialties rather than ramen.

lanterns outside

After we ordered, they brought us a plastic glove (because we ordered a pork rib ramen), and chopsticks+tissues in a bucket.

the seasonings were already on the table

black tonkotsu, RM23.90

pork rib black shoyu, RM27.80

Both were very tasty! I remember I preferred one of the soups over the other...but I can't remember which one. Probably the tonkotsu? I tend to prefer tonkotsu most of the time.

The pork rib is one big bone, hence the glove to use with it. The meat was tender, and we first pulled it off with chopsticks (three of us were sharing the two bowls of ramen), before I finished it off with the glove at the end.

We also ordered a yaki gyoza that looked very good in reviews. And yes, it does look good.

yaki gyoza, RM13.80

The taste was only so-so though...not worth that price, I would say. The skin was too thick, with too little filling.

There was a 5% service charge added to the prices.

After the meal, I visited their washroom before leaving...there was this funny sticker on the toilet that I had to take a photo of. :P

poor capybara...having constipation? Haha...

Trying not-so-Ipoh food in Ipoh

During our trip to Ipoh last month, we discovered a number of restaurants with the Grab dine-out offer.

The first was V Signature Bowl, a pokebowl shop. We ordered two of the recommended bowls instead of making our own.

teriyaki salmon, RM28.90 nett

jelly salmon, RM23.90 nett

Teriyaki salmon came with perfectly grilled salmon, and the skin was so crispy! Here's the ingredient list from the menu (that I found on Google :P ) : teriyaki salmon, scallop muscle, cherry tomato, edamame, sesame seeds, pickled ginger, seaweed flakes, lettuce.

Jelly salmon came with: jellyfish, almond, walnut, chuka wakame, shoyu salmon, pumpkin seeds, wasabi, corn, sesame seeds.

They might have swapped some ingredients...since both bowls have corn. But no matter, it wasn't like we remembered each item when the dishes came...what's important is that they were both extremely good!

Another visit was to Mom's de Pot.

We ordered an assam curry fish set (RM18.90), which comes with rice, tea, and some vegetables (acar). The nice thing was that they brought us a jug of tea (which was refillable) and three glasses, even though the three of us ordered just one set. Then we added on two à-la-carte dishes (small size, for 1-2pax): pig trotter vinegar (RM19) and claypot kangkung (RM15).

Every dish tasted good; and after the meal, we decided we needed another photo to show how clean the dishes were.

There was a service charge of 6% at this shop.

And then this one was not with Grab, but one night we decided to try a famous mee rebus not so far away (to avoid needing to go into town). The shop is called Mee Rebus Ramli.

mee bandung (new item on the menu), RM9

mee rebus, RM7.90

mee rebus daging, RM12.80

The beef in the mee bandung seemed slightly more tender than the one in the mee rebus, but I think I prefer the gravy of the mee rebus (and the beef was tender enough too). The plain mee rebus was good too, but I would want a little meat to go with it. :P They have chicken and prawn versions too, and I believe some others that I can't remember...

They charge an SST of 6% on top of the menu prices.

Inno Bear meets Charmander

Remember Inno Bear?

Well, the other day he saw Charmander.

"Oh, your tail is drooping."

"Let me help you."

"Ahh!! It's hot!!"

Poor Inno Bear...he was too kind. :P

Seoul food

My first lunch in Seoul was bulgogi in a simple restaurant; I expect it is one that locals go to.

side dishes

I felt that the broth was too watered-down...Daorae's one is better! :P

After lunch I spotted this stall selling twisted doughnuts (which I wanted to try) and other stuff, and after some hesitation (because I had just eaten!), bought some.

I bought three pieces because I wanted to try both the twisted doughnut and the round one, and three costs the same as two. (one for 1000 won, and three for 2000 won)

Turns out that the round one is the same as our ham chi peng, with red bean filling. With or without the sugar coating, the bun is the same...so whether you want sugar or not is a matter of preference. The twisted doughnut also turned out to be nothing special...made with the same dough. (I didn't eat all three pieces immediately after lunch; I tried a bit immediately but kept some for later.) 

That night I found this shop that sold steamed dumplings and these fried items (like tempura). I wanted to try the dumplings, but one set had nine pieces, and they didn't allow mixing flavours...so I gave up on it. (on hindsight I should have tried it...I didn't want to try so much of the same snack, but ultimately the other snacks I found were not good...)

I did buy some of their tempura.

they refried it after we ordered

one squid and one prawn

after that I found some not-nice dumplings at a stall

and an interesting tteok filled with japchae

I was going to order a sweet tteok (honey, I think?), but the seller kept recommending me this one, saying it was really good (it was the same price). After that I realized that maybe it was because she had a few of these already fried. :P Anyway, it wasn't bad (and it was so seriously hot, the filling burnt my tongue), but I felt that it was too much in the end, maybe because it was carbs filled with carbs?

The next day, right before joining the tour, I tried ramen in a convenience store nearby the meeting point. (I met a Malay family there from Malaysia)

beef soup ramen

quite good actually

I didn't know that we were to ask for chopsticks at the counter, and I looked high and low around the hot water dispenser before I decided to ask at the counter whether there were any chopsticks. The thing is, if chopsticks weren't provided, I couldn't buy the cup noodles at all!

The tour guide recommended us a lunch place right before entering to Nami Island. She said that it was in the Chuncheon region, and the specialty there is dakgalbi. Unfortunately the portions are for sharing, and there were very few meals for one person (and none looked appealing to me). I shared a table with two other solo-travelling ladies; one from Hong Kong and one from the Philippines, probably around my age. Unfortunately (again), they both didn't want the spicy version, so we ordered the non-spicy one.

The lady from Hong Kong wanted to try the potato dumplings, so we ordered a set. (this is the dumplings that I didn't get to try the night before, so I had no objections...though I was disappointed that it was potato). But...I think in the end the "potato" might be the starchy skin. It was quite good, though I couldn't figure out what exactly the filling was. And I definitely cannot finish so many on my own!

That night I tried something I really really wanted to try: marinated crabs. I ordered a set for one person which cost 20k won. It came with a marinated crab, a marinated prawn, and two grilled prawns. (A similar set, but with crab that has roe, cost 36k won. The waiter recommended it, but I decided it was too expensive just to add roe. I wanted to try what this dish was about; I already knew that roe would taste good!)

huge meal

It seems that they gave me an extra half-crab with roe? Maybe because I told them "it's too expensive" when I said I didn't want the set with roe? :P

just to show everything properly :P

There was a salad/snack bar with free side dishes, and free-flow makgeolli. They even had teapots for us to fill with makgeolli and bring back to our tables, for people who were there in groups. (or alone...but I didn't bother, I just used a bowl, it wasn't like I was going to be drinking a lot of it)

There were two dishes which were kept warm on stovetops: mussels and something like curry chicken. Both of which you see in the photo below:

I took just a tiny bit to try, because I had already so much food on the table. Both dishes tasted decent, actually. As for the crab, it was not bad, and I like crab in general, but somehow cold food is not that appealing to me. (they had other dishes with cooked crab...but I specifically wanted to try this marinated dish)

The main thing that stood out in this meal was…how tiring it was. They gave scissors and tongs (which were in the steel jar you see in the top-right of the photo with the full set meal). But I couldn’t figure out how to use them properly…cutting through the shell of the crab claws was extremely difficult! Is it due to lack of energy? If I ever plan to eat crabs in Korea again, I’m going to have to look up how-to videos on how to eat them before I go. I think I spent more than an hour and a half eating there, digging out the meat from the crab. 

The next day, I had kimbap in a shop that looked like a chain restaurant, called LaBab. You can check out its website here.

I think the woman was waiting for her take-out. At the far end is where the side dishes are. I remember they had chuka wakame, and I like that a lot, so I took some to eat with my kimbap, even though it wasn't exactly a good match.

I ordered a beef kimbap

inside

I liked this, it was good! It was probably the best dish I had in Seoul, though it cannot compare with the best of Busan or Gyeongju. :P

Later on I had a noodle dish in a mall when it was raining. The mall was packed because it was a public holiday, and unfortunately some more interesting restaurants were full (for example a restaurant that had jjamppong, which was not really on my list of must-try foods since it was a dish with Chinese influence, but was still interesting). I was trying to avoid western food. So I ended up eating these beef noodles in a restaurant that seemed to serve nothing really special, but was still almost full.

This is probably the second lowest-rated meal that I had in Korea, with the dumplings from the stall being the lowest. :P 

So that's it for my Korea trip posts. It is interesting to note that this post is scheduled for 16 May, which is also the date that I arrived back in Malaysia after the trip. (I didn't plan this; I was just scheduling posts every other day, and it so happened this is my last post.) So, my blog posts are really done one year after my trip!

A rainy day in Gangnam

After leaving Namsan, I went to Gangnam (the only place that I visited across the Hangang river). My main destination was the Bongeunsa temple.

art decorations in the subway station

Since the temple is next to the Coex Mall, you can see the arrows pointing to the Coex exit.

I'm pretty sure these decorations are for the Buddha's birthday, and not there permanently

it seems that the temple is quite big, but there were so many people around; I didn't walk in further

if you zoom in, you can see the banner that says there is a free lunch for Buddha's birthday

I had read about it in my research; it is a vegetarian lunch. So I wasn't interested. :P And again, there were so many people, I didn't even want to go and take a look at what it was like. (I was also afraid that they would immediately serve me a big portion...and I wouldn't know how to say no!)

the temple seen from across the road

As you can see from the photos, the sky was cloudy, and some people were carrying umbrellas. There were only some raindrops at that point, but as I headed to the Coex mall, the drops started getting bigger, and later the rain really got heavier.

this photo was taken from inside the mall

a huge bookstore (I didn't go in)

I believe this is between the mall and a subway station

If I remember correctly, I went through the Samsung subway station and went out to another square. But it was raining, so I simply snapped some photos from the entrance/exit of the station.

After that I went back to the hotel to get my luggage. At that station, I saw an interesting mechanism for people to dry their umbrellas when entering the station.

Near the airport (or before taking the subway line to the airport, I can't remember which), there was a conveyor belt for our luggage. It was slower than me though...look at where my luggage was when I arrived at the bottom of the stairs. :P

Can't see it? It was still at the top... Here's another photo so that you can see what my bag looks like, then you can probably see it in the photo above.

This would be really good for heavy bags, though.

And that ends the Korean adventure... As you can see, I missed a lot of parts of Seoul since I only spent two nights there. But I did manage to see the places that were the most interesting to me (Cheonggyecheon and Seoullo, mainly, and also Gwanghwamun Square). 

The only things left to post now is the food I had in Seoul. Frankly, I didn't really find any of the food that I had in Seoul super good, but there is one interesting dish (read: marinated crabs). So, wait for it!