Sujebi + Pajeon + Trucker Hats

Cathy and Greg arrived last Friday and we've been having an awesome time despite my work schedule (our students are on vacation from real school, so they sign up for extra English classes with us, so we all have 2-3 extra classes a day) and the official arrival of monsoon season.

We spent Tuesday night in Insadong, where we shopped a bit and tried out sujebi for the first time. The main street in Insadong has a lot of art galleries and shops that sell traditional Korean goods. There are a bunch of little winding side streets, off the main strip, that are lined with restaurants. It's hard to find specific restaurants because none of the names on these streets are in English. It helps when the restaurant has photos of the food, that's how we knew we were at the sujebi place. It was a cozy, cute restaurant. Here is a photo of sujebi:

It's dough flakes in a fishy broth. Ours also had zuchinni, potatoes, green onions and oysters in it. The sujebi was tasty and it was the reason we went to this restaurant, but the real superstar ended up being the pajeon. It looks like a pancake and comes sliced like a pizza. It's flour and egg with vegetables. Our pajeon had green onions, peppers, and oysters. We thought we had discovered this magical, little restaurant that makes the most delicious flour-egg-pancake things, until the very next night we stumbled upon pajeon heaven in Hyewa (or as Greg put it, KHOP). It definitely made sense that an easy-to- make yummy pancake would have it's own restaurant and be available in more places than just a random side street of Insadong. I also started to notice that less fancier versions (flatter, less ingredients) are served as street food pretty much everywhere.

While shopping in Insadong, we decided to embrace Seoul fashion and bought funky trucker hats. We also all wore vests out one night and matching colors because Korea is the only place where color coordinating or straight up wearing the same outfit as your significant other and/or friends isn't viewed as lame. Next, we will need to each purchase some ridiculous sunglasses and wear them out all night, maybe even with the hats. The criteria for ridiculous is as follows: bright colors (preferably a primary color) oversized, and either a Rayban or Aviator style. Extra points for the Kanye West Stronger shades or ones that glow in the dark. It's just how they rock it in Seoul.

Edit: Vickie has already requested a trucker hat, our plan to reignite the trucker hat trend and spread Seoul fashion to Chicago has already begun. Be prepared for bright colors, neon, layers, and Mickey Mouse.