BBQ Korean style - Seoul

If you ask Koreans for dinner recommandations, you can be sure most will say Korean barbecue is the way to go. So naturally, that's what we had. Several times.
Korean barbecue has different name depending on the type and cut of meat that you order.

Informal Samyeopsal place

The first night in Seoul went out for Samgyeopsal (삼겹살) in a busy, informal eatery. Samgyeopsal is pork belly barbecue. We sat down at a little table/barbecue made from a drum, and ordered meat for three people. When you place you order, they fire up the barbecue, and the little side dishes are served. These side dishes are called banchan (반찬).You do not have any saying in the side dishes you'll get. That's for the kitchen to decide. But you can be sure there will be at least one dish of kimchi (김치).

Barbecue with side dishes

Once your meat is cooked, the fun continues. Along with the banchan you got some greens. This can be different types of lettuce, and usually you also get a few wild sesame (perilla) leaves. Put a piece of meat on there, add some sauces and/or veggies, fold the leaf and enjoy your bundle of yumminess.
Generally the staff will help you with cooking, or take over if they think you are not cooking it correctly: we smoked out that first place! Whoops....

Consecutive steps of our 2nd barbecue

So we had another go a few nights later. In a slightly fancier restaurant that had electric cooking plates installed in the table. We picked a leaner cut of pork this time. In this restaurant, the ritual started with some vegetables on the plate, carefully put in the correct position. Then the meat was put on there, and..... cut into strips with the ultimate Korean cooking utensil: scissors.
The strips were cooked, and then flambéed.
After this dinner, a dessert was cooked on that same plate, consisting of rice and cheese.

In a supermarket, pretty lettuce is slod by the leaf!

Our third and final barbecue was in Jeju-si, with the famous Jeju black pig. This time was a combination of the previous barbecues. A fancy table plate with streaky belly meat. The people at the table next to us were no shy in telling us if we did something wrong. We had to place the giant mushroom at the correct position (left side, not right side), cook the meat longer before cutting it, and not put the veggies on there just yet. Did I mention the Koreans are quite fond of doing things in the correct manner?

Barbecue basics: banchan, leaves and scissors

Since these barbecues tend to be smelly, you can always get a big plastic bag to put your coats in. You can order drinks with you meal, but water is served for free in any restaurant.

Something fishy - Tsukiji Market Tokyo

When you google at 'top things to do in Tokyo' you can almost be sure that Tsukiji fish market will pop up, most notably the tuna auction.
Being a food market lover myself, I really wanted to go there. But... the tuna auction starts at 6 am. And only a limited number of tourists are allowed to attend, so you have to queue at around 4 am. There is no public transport at that time of night (oddly enough Tokyo's public transport stops around midnight?!) so you have to either walk there, take a cab, or wait over a few drinks at one of the nearby pubs.  We opted out of attending the tuna auction, bad tourists...I know!

One of the small stalls

At around 8 am the rest of the inner market opens up to visitors, so there we were. Surrounded by tour groups, we entered the public space.

And now I hear you wondering...How was it??? First impression: way more tourists  than expected, and at the same time less of a tourist trap than expected.  First and foremost, this is a place where people work, no signs which way to go or defined routes. This also means that you have to be carefull not to be overrun by one of the funny, and very fast, carts. Even  though there is hardly any room to walk in between the stalls, the carts race past!

Tuna waiting for a buyer

The fish and seafood they sell is simply amazingly fresh and varies from extraordinary to bizar.  And it is a lot.  The sheer number of sea creatures on sale was mindblowing. It really made us wonder how much longer it takes to empty the oceans.

Super size mollusc

Of course there was an abundance of tuna. Al tuna arrives deeply frozen. Did you know that those beautifull slices of sashimi are precut in to blocks, while frozen, with a industrial band saw? I didn't!

I saw the biggest mussles I ever saw: at least 3 times the size of my hands. Crates of roe, alien crustaceans, unknown molluscs, vibrant octopi and fish in alls size and sorts inlcuding some wiggly, still alive, skewered fish.

Sawing sashimi blocks

The traditional thing to do after visiting the Tsukiji Market is to eat fresh sushi. Most people try to do that in the inner market, but the outer market makes a good alternative if you want somwhere (slightly) less busy.  We didn't do that either... we were such lousy tourists, I know! But the massacre we had just witnessed satiated or need for animal protein.

Vibrant octopi

Mesmerized by the city - Kuala Lumpur

For those of you that don't know it yet... I'm a city girl. Even though I grew up in a village in a country without 'real' cities .
Even in my tiny country I like to live in a city. I like the hustle and bustle, the contradictions, the anonymity of large groups of people, the inventivity that comes from living in a confined space and the chance meetings. 

Petronas towers

So if we're travelling I always try to spend a few days in a BIG city. My favourite used to be Bangkok, but I changed that to Shanghai in 2009. Thus far Asian cities seem more 'alive' to me than Western cities.

Offerings on sale

So when we went to Kuala Lumpur in 2013 I was curious what she would be like. She was... demure. Being in a muslim country means that alcohol and nightlife isn't abundently present.  Not that I need alcohol but it does change the atmophere.

Best satay, one street from the über touristy nigh market

But there are a few nice night markets with lovely street food, lots of big and small shrines and chinese temples. And the contrast old versus new, hitech versus traditional is everywhere.

A few old houses in between modern high rise

So Kuala Lumpur on the whole... I like the multitude of Chinese temples, and some of the street food, but wasn't as vibrant as I had hoped.

One of the many Chinese temples

Katz's - New York

When we went to New York, of course we had a couple of places we really wanted to visit. So like good and proper tourists we went to Central Park, took the Staten Island Ferry and walked the Brooklyn Bridge.

And when we had dinner with fiends (locals), they told us that when we really wanted to be in New York, we HAD to go to Katz's deli and eat a pastrami sandwich, so we did.

Katz's is a retro deli in Manhattens Lower East Side. In this area there are many kosher and kosher style delis. Katz's is a kosher style deli  and considered one of the best, and according to wikipedia: Each week, Katz's serves 10,000 pounds of pastrami 5,000 pounds corned beef, 2,000 pounds of  salami and 12,000 hot dogs.

the diner is covered with signs and photos

We expected that it would be a pretty touristy, since Katz's is featured in several movies, including the most famous scene from 'When Harry met Sally'.... yes, the one in which Meg Ryan is faking it!

And of course the exact table from this movie as a sign above it, but on the whole, the diner felt pretty authentic.

Pickles and salamis waiting to be sold

Lots of locals were eating in and ordering take away. We decided of course on eating in, considering the size of the portions we dicided on sharing a pastrami sandwich.
Served on rye bread, with  musterd and pickles on the side.

Our order