Weekend report: Sweet, sweet soju!

[muckefuck]

My original plan for Saturday afternoon was simply to do some shopping in K-town for the sojutini night in HP. But then I got a notice telling me that my absence at this year's Pride Parade had been noted and if I also failed to attend Market Days, my Queer Card would be suspended. (I've been close to having it revoked before, so I knew this was really no joke.)

Fortunately, his_regard leapt into the breach, agreeing to save me literally hours of commuting by driving me to Arirang for supplies and thence to the South Side. As a result, I was able to put in an appearance at Buck's, rendezvous with monshu, ottr4bear, and Nuphy, and get in one stroll down the length of Halsted. Unfortunately, my companions failed to comprehend that the entire affair is simply an excuse for exchanging warm drunken greetings with lovely people you see only a few times a year, so they left me behind when I stopped to chat with the Scoutmaster and missed out entirely on running into mikiedoggie and his yummy entourage.

I caught up with them outside Yoshi's Cafe, past home of a kickass grilled portobello sandwich. To my sorrow, however, they have replaced it with a pattie of deep-fried breaded mushroom goo, which was hard enough for monshu to eat Atkins-style and nigh-impossible to manipulate as a sandwich. I discovered too late that the Kobe-style beef patty was far the better option.

Unbeknownst to me, the best option would've been to turn my back on all faux-gourmet carny food at the fair, since no sooner had I met up with his_regard than he suggested a stop-off at the incomparable Hot Doug's. Hard to beat the new location for nowhereness, plopped in the middle of a linear office park along California Avenue. Alas, the bacon sausage (Is there anything that advanced technology combined with American ingenuity cannot do?) was smothered in avocado and tomato, so I opted for a lamb-mint hot dog with curried yoghurt.

From there, it was off to the Korean supermarket for plastic bottles of soju, homemade kimchi (powerful enough to turn the GWO pink!) from the artisans in the corner, and miscellanious finds like Hite Beer and Jaogapisul. The latter I simply had to buy because I (1) had never seen it before and (2) had no idea what it is. A little research determined that it was a wine flavoured with the bark of the "thorny" okaphi plant (most likely Eleutherococcus senticosus, a.k.a. "Siberian ginseng"), an araliaceous cousin to true ginseng. According to my Korean dictionary, it has a "warming effect" in traditional Chinese medical parlance (which means I have no idea what) and the wine is good for backaches.

As for the dinner itself, mollpeartree has already done a bang-up job of summing it up. I have only a few things to add:

• Nothing satisfies the atavistic frontiersman in you like assembling the chair you will shortly be sitting on as you eat your dinner.
• It turns out that the platonic ideal of the deep-red orange-flavoured sojutini cocktail we tried to invent for Chinese New Year year before last was the "blood orange soju thing" princeofcairo mixed for us.
• Next time, buy the kochwucang and blend it with miso yourself, don't try to cut corners by buying the premixed stuff--or at least have the sense to check the sodium content first.
• bunj and e. have had an ice cream machine since they were married and have never served us seafood-flavoured gelato à la Iron Chef? WTH?
• e. called it "pound-and-a-half" cake; I call it "torta nostra" because, like a mafioso, it hits you hard enough the first time that it doesn't have to come back and hit you again. (Everyone wanted seconds, but no one thought they would survive them.)

Comments

[trom.livejournal.com]

replaced it with a????? you damn tease you....

-M

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

You silly. He means that they have replaced it with a blank spot on the menu, and when you order it, you get an empty plate.

[mikiedoggie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had an entourage with me, but I had to pay them. So it doesn't count. Good to see you again!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

They looked rather reasonably-priced, though.

I'm never more than an e-mail away. We should brunch!

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

I really should have called you -- it's not like I don't know your number. I was hoping to run into you like Bear Pride~!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

"There was a farmer of Song who tilled the land, and in his field was a stump. One day a rabbit came racing across the field, bumped into the stump, broke its neck, and died. Thereupon the farmer laid aside his plow and took up watch beside the stump, hoping that he would get another rabbit in the same way." (Han Fei, 3rd cent. B.C.E.)

Your odds are so much worse at Market Days. I think I was there for like an hour, all told--and I hadn't planned to stop in at all. Too much resemblance to the boring, boisterous, beer-swilling straight street fairs of my youth.