Journal Entry #4 Vivian Shon

[Vivian Shon]

For this finally bi-weekly report, I decided to write about the time that Rachel, Aliya, and I decided to go to a local Korean bbq restaurant to get an authentic Korean food experience to close our semester. When I first came to Richmond, I was shocked to find out that there were not many Korean dining scenes available. For instance, they only had a Korean fusion restaurant called “J-Kogi” that I was not really fond of. Back where I live (in Chicago), my suburb is booming with Korean bbq restaurants, so I was very excited to hear from Aliya when she said that she found a new restaurant called “Korean Garden” that we could go experience. For this meeting, we decided to focus on the Korean bbq experience in particular and how this is such a huge part of Korea’s dining culture. When Rachel and I researched the background of kbbq, we found out that this originated in Korean all the way back in 37 B.C. when “맥젹" or fire-roasted skewers can be offered to the king. This was later known as “bulgogi” as well. When we first entered the restaurant, an old female server started to talk to us in Korean as she suspected that we knew how to speak fluently. We referred to her as “아줌마" which vaguely translates to an old lady and we were able to share an authentic conversation about her about my study abroad experience in Korea two semesters ago and if she had any food she recommended from the menu. She recommended us “갈비" which translates to marinated beef and we also had traditional “삼겹살" which means pork belly. We portrayed some Korean culture by having the youngest “막내" aka “maknae” do the cooking because traditionally in Korea, the youngest person on the team would do all the grilling of the meat. It stems from a hierarchy of “hoobae” and “sunbae” and usually the hoobaes/maknaes have do the cooking. Therefore, Rachel being the youngest out of the three, started to grill the meats and we simply had a lot of fun taking turns cooking afterward. We also got to experience a lot of the different “반찬,” otherwise known as side dishes that came with the meat. The lady offered us “계란찜,” “떡볶이,” “된장찌개,” and more. Eating kbbq with Rachel and Aliya brought back a lot of good memories and nostalgia about Korea and it was such a great time being able to eat good food and share a great conversation with them and the restaurant staff. I don’t cook too much Korean food at home, but I hope to change that and cook more authentic dishes this summer. 

[Max Joynes]

This was extremely interesting and insightful thanks for sharing. The Korean BBQ experience sounds awesome and one that really enhanced your learning. I like the way how you incorporated a lot of the languages words within the post and it really added value to it. The background of KBBQ is fascinating as well! I hope you do cook more authentic dishes and wish you luck in all your language learning.

[Peace Nyeche]

Hey Vivian this restaurant sounds really good. I wish we had more Korean places in Richmond too. Luckily I've been to a few really good ones in NOVA. Meokja Meokja and SO bbq change my life. Especially the all you can eat menu at SO. I got to go with Somyung and Anna and it was so fun experiencing that environment with classmates. I am definitely going to check out more Korean places and look forward to looking out for the dishes you talked about!