after dinner sneeze

t says: yes, it’s been a while, but we’re back. I have some excuses to explain absence, but none are at all that convincing. I was working on other hobbies. We are out less at new restaurants. I forgot the WordPress password. Ultimately it was just time and convenience. With the ubiquity of YouFace, InstaTwitter, and the like, I just couldn’t keep up with the dying art that is blogging …

But now I come crawling back to the good ‘ol adsz. Why now? Vacation!

And so it begins.

Back in January, g and I churned the hell out of some credit cards and accumulated enough points to plan a wonderful vacation. Flights to Korea were cheap (they just impeached their president) so we thought: “family reunion in Seoul!”.

Of course the evolving geopolitical wildfire made us change our itinerary to Japan-only for the trip (which was the day before North Korea started lobbing missiles over northern Japan). Nevertheless, we are sticking with the plan. Tokyo here we come!

In the meantime, an update from my phone’s archives:

We went to Namu Stonepot and it was surprisingly great! Now g and I can be sticklers when it comes to Korean food, especially with current champion Jang su Jang only an hour away -so we went into this not expecting much. I was blown away with their [pseudo-]ramen noodles added to their kimchi stew which was superb. Not as developed as JSJ, but for something easily had within city limits and next to BiRite ice cream, this place was great! I was sweating like grandpa in no time! Keep in mind that there is often a line, which is partly due to the volume of it being a hip new place, but also because it’s clear that folks often have no idea what to expect so spend several minutes on ordering, as they pimp the order-taker on what every dish is. (For the record, g and I ordered in under 37 seconds – we knew what we they had, we knew what we wanted, and we ordered … like the professionals we are …). It’s definitely worth a try – a better experience than Namu Gaji for sure.  Some people might be distracted by other dishes, like the rice stone pot or the Korean tacos, and those are fine – but they suffer from the same problem that Namu Gaji suffered from: poor execution (trying to do too much fusion ultimately dilutes the homestyle warmth that Korean food brings).  So pop a zantac, stick with the kimchi stew, and add some noodles.