Sunday Samgapsal

We've been teaching a couple of weekend classes to prepare students for an English competition in April. Sunday after class, Isabelle (director) and Mr. Jon (owner) took us out to dinner for samgapsal.

Travis and Mr. Jon at the famous samgapsal restaurant.

Samgapsal is a cut of pork that's like really thick bacon. You grill it and then cut it into pieces and wrap it in lettuce leaves. Normally we eat kalbi, which is a leaner cut; neither one of us was really into the samgapsal. This is partly due to the fact that Koreans eat it when it's lightly browned rather than cooked to a crisp, which is too much for our delicate American stomachs.

Then we discovered Manyan-ddong Dweji, a famous samgapsal restaurant about a block from our apartment. The name is pretty clever--Manyandong is our neighborhood, and ddong dweji is a special kind of extra-fatty pig from the island of Jeju. Anyway, turns out the samgapsal is DELICIOUS at this place, so Isabelle and Mr. Jon took us there for dinner. We all ate a little too much, but it was so worth it!


All the fat from the samgapsal drains down the stone into tofu, mushrooms, garlic, and kimchi. It's amazing that something that tastes so horrid when it's raw (kimchi) is so tasty when it's been carmelized in bacon fat. It is seriously one of the best foods ever!


Lettuce for wrapping the samgapsal pieces, plus a dozen side dishes like pickled onions, radish, fruit salad, and so on.


Isabelle turning the meat and veggies. Luckily Travis, Joel, and I had our own slab so we were able to cook our meat so that it was nice and crispy rather than barely browned.


After you're finished eating, you fry up some rice on the slab with any remaining meat and kimchi. It's impossible to eat a meal without rice when you're with Koreans!