Assa!

I think I will like to set up camp here or keep a table reserved just for me. If I do end up studying in London, you'll find me here all the time. 

The place is fairly small with it's Japanese counterpart next to it owned by the same family I guess. Both are small and homey in size and at busy times you'll be waiting 15-30 minutes outside the door, sometimes depending on your party size you might be sat next to another couple. In the evenings, the basement seating is in use but without ventilation, you'll be out smelling like a Korean street vendor.

Despite the small interior, I think that's what makes this place great, it's homey, the staff are friendly and the service is quick. The kitchen is small too and it's crazy how they can consistently produce such amazing food every time I go there.

With Korean food, I like the sharing aspect of it, especially because I'm not a big eater it makes me feel less guilty about not being able to finish my food.

So today, a friend and I went out for lunch here and even we couldn't finish the food. We ordered:

Seafood and kimchi pancake

They're not stingy with ingredients, yay, it's wonderfully crispy and full of seafood and kimchi which is just how I like it. I think this is good enough for three people, we left almost a quarter of it.

 Rice cake in chilli sauce (ddeokbokki)

THIS IS MY FAVOURITE KOREAN DISH EVER. 

So happy they added a bit of ramyeon/ramen. A dish consisting of rice cakes, fish cakes, spring onions, gochujang sauce (spicccyyy) all in a dish that starts off sweet and numbs your mouth from all the spice. If you're ever sick, this will clear your nose out in three mouthfuls. Best ddeokbokki in London I've tasted so far.

 Stir fried marinated beef

This would be my second favourite. 

I like how in Asian cuisine, meat is usually cut very thinly, I guess it absorbs flavour and cooks quicker. This was addictive and very delicious, again this would've been enough for four people. 

With two cokes, complementary barley tea and namul (first time I didn't pay for namul in a Korean restaurant in London) the bill came down to £27.70 for the both of us. Not bad! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Melissa.

Sexy Sandwich #2: The Classic Bánh Mì

This week I present this beauty that I would like to call the Classic 4 Pork Banh Mi.

Now that's a bit of a mouthful, but this sandwich is worth it's £5 from Nam Caphe in Hoxton/Kingsland Road.

 

IT HAS FOUR KINDS OF PORK.

HOLY CRAP.

YOU HAVE PORK FLOSS, PATE, ROAST AND HAM.

COME OOOOONN.

I remember when I had this every Saturday for two straight months during a course at the nearby college, it was that good. 

The bread is so perfectly crisp and airy and warm. The sauce so perfectly seasoned and tangy as well as spicy, my lips swell and I end up with Lana Del Rey's lips. The contrasting flavours of the spice and the cold cucumber and coriander. Oh my. 

The portion sizes used to be a lot bigger but the sandwich fills you up big time. 

More please!

Dim Sum Yum at The Lotus Floating Restaurant!

So it's our second restaurant visit in what feels like months! We went to the Lotus Floating Restaurant in London Docklands (http://www.lotusfloating.co.uk/) which served Chinese food and we had such a good time! We visited here with two friends of ours so we had quite a large variety of food to choose from. Melissa was the only one out of the four of us that had been there before so we didn't really know what to expect.

Seeing as Melissa had been there before, she knew exactly what to do and started ticking off all of the food that we would be eating with the other three of us just adding in a few things that sounded good to us. As our drinks we had Chinese tea to start off with (90p per person to get a pot of tea) and then all of us (except Melissa) ordered a soft drink each at £1.70 each. We ordered on the sheet that you can see on the left by ticking off what we wanted to eat. As each item came to the table it was ticked off.

Top Row (Left to Right): Fried Yam Croquet, Egg Fried Rice, BBQ Roast Pork and Fillet, Pork Dumpling
Bottom Row (Left to Right): Special Fried Rice, Prawn Dumplings (Beef Cheung Fun behind it), Fried Vegetarian Spring Rolls, Mixed Meat Croquet and Char Siu Pork Buns

Erin: This was my first time properly experimenting with Chinese food. I'm usually quite plain with what I choose such as Rice and Noodles or something of the sort however I really loved the wide variety of food that we had today. My favourites were the Fried Vegetarian Spring rolls (even though they were slightly wet inside, they were quite nice), the Fried Yam Croquets and the Mixed Meat Croquets due to them having a sort of sweet taste and still being soft. I wasn't too keen on the Cheung Fun for two reasons. 1. It felt so slimey and 2. I was forced to eat it by peer pressure >.<. Also I tried the Char Siu Pork Buns before or something similar and I wasn't too keen on it beforehand and it didn't really change that much today. It was nice but it wouldn't something I'd eat regularly.

Melissa: Soo much food. As usual when eating out with Erin, she just lets me order everything because the rule of thumb within our friendship is whatever I choose is usually good. My favourites had to be the fried yam croquettes and the prawn dumplings because they were filled to the brim with goodness.The croquettes were  made with glutinous rice flour rather than potato so they had this sweet stickiness that would explode into your mouth if you get a bit too excited at the sight of food. You can never go wrong with roast pork so that went down quickly. There were a lot of disappointments such as the stodgy Char Siu Buns and the oddly soggy spring rolls (how can you go wrong with spring rolls?!)  another downer was the Cheung Fun as it was my first time trying it and I just did not like the texture at all. It's like slime going down your throat. Yuck.

Now for the part of the meal we were most looking forward to and the part of the meal that most people usually look forward to! DESSERT!

Erin: For our dessert we ordered the Egg Custard Tarts as you can see on the right. The problem I found with this was the there were four of us yet they only gave us three so we just split one into half. I wasn't amazingly keen on it, mainly because I don't usually like tarts due to their texture but it was quite nice.

Melissa: I looovvee the Chinese version of custard tarts, instead of shortcrust pastry you have this nice flaky pastry that is married together with custard that is in between setting. I also like how dinky it is so I could chomp these in one mouthful. That doesn't sound very ladylike...



Erin: We kept within our budget very easily for this meal. Seeing as there were four of us, the meal came to £57.86 which came to just under £15 each which was great for such a large meal that filled us all so much. This restaurant does have a service charge so if they hadn't of charged us that it would have been just over £13 each. I would recommend this restaurant to many people as they have such a wide variety of food and the service there is great. Any time a dish was emptied it was taken away straight away.

Melissa:  Dim sum is always a cheap and cheerful experience and the whole idea of sharing food and coming around the table for a meal is a very traditional Asian thing. One thing that's always a good indicator of how good a Chinese restaurant is, is how many natives are in the restaurant itself. One thing that is a bit awkward with dim sum is portion sizes because there was four of us today and to allow everyone to try a bit of everything we just cut it up (most of the food was served in threes) apart from that I am now sporting a food baby, so for under £20, my tummy is very happy.

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