Birthday Celebrations w/ Food !

My birthday was the other day and I just wnated to share the family celebration I had that, of course, centered around food!

Last Sunday, we had a larger family dinner to celebrate my birthday and I decided to eat Korean BBQ!

If you haven't had K-BBQ before and you love meat, then you should definitely try it! We went to Palace BBQ in Bellevue (there's another one in Federal Way). To check out their menu and site click HERE)

I love the fact that you cook everything yourself and can watch it sizzle and smoke  >.< There's a large selection of meats and seafood and my personal favorites are the pork belly (pictured above--its like bacon), Kalbi (pictured above-marinated short ribs), shrimp and bulgolgi (marinated thinly sliced beef).

I also love the banchan (small side dishes) that they will keep refilling for you as well. My favorites are the cucumber kimchi and potato salad that they make. The dipping sauces for the unmarinated meat are so simple but good as well. There's sesame oil that I like to add dopanjang (fermented bean paste) and garlic. Then I like the citrus-y soy sauce with jalapeno to dip the pork belly in. It's all just so tasty!

If I have to be honest though, I think I do like the Federal Way restaurant slightly better than the Bellevue one, but they both make me happy =P

And of course, for some reason, I have to have beer (Korean beer of course) with my bbq. I'm not a beer drinker, but I realllly love OB--its not too heavy but isn't too watery. It has a nice lager flavor and I love the carbonation. It's good for washing down the grease haha. 

Just for kicks, but I did like it. It's a baby octopus (like calmari).



Then on my actual birthday day (yesterday the 21st ^^), my brother treated me out to Ramen at Kukai Ramen & Izakaya. I've been here before but don't think I've written a review on it. Anyways, in Chinese tradition, you are usually supposed to eat noodles on you birthday to represent a long life/longevity. I was feeling for some Japanese ramen so this is where we went!

We started off with some appetizers: their yaki onigiri (grilled rice balls) and their house salad. I wish their onigiri was less mushy and more hard/crunchy. The rice was too mushy for my taste and it was barely crispy on the outside--like it was too wet. The flavor of it was good though and there was some sake (salmon) bits in it I believe and I like it when it's wrapped in the nori (seaweed).

I didn't try the salad but it was just a simple one with tofu, chicken, nori, and a miso dressing.

Oh yea, and we also had agedashi tofu, which is basically a deep fried tofu in a dashi broth topped in bonito dried tuna fish) flakes and shredded daikon (a type of radish).

Now the best part--the actual ramen! I really like their Tsukemen (dipping noodles) with a tonkotsu (thick pork broth) dipping stock.  I like dipping ramen sometimes because I can control the amount of flavor and bits of what I eat since I don't always like mixing everything together. I choose the regular broth (they have a lighter portion) so I could enjoy the full flavor of the pork broth. It was very rich, thick and savory and slightly intense in flavor but it's exactly how I like it. The pork slices were also very flavorful and tender so it wasn't chewy at all.

One of my favorite parts to the dish is the half boiled tamago (egg) and how the outside was nice and cook but the inside yolk was nice and runny--having none of it cooked at all! They must have their timing down to be so consistent. Anyways, I definitely loved that and always love my yolks in eggs extra runny.

Of course to top off the night (even though the weather was basically freezing!) I picked up a mini treat of Menchie's frozen yogurt which was basically only one store over!

I picked the mango sorbet (hella bomb), blueberry pomegranate (I wanted to keep in the same tart theme) and of the plain original flavor. I topped it off with some mochi (chewy rice cakes), popping boba in mango, cheesecake chunks, cookie dough, pomegrante seeds, kiwi and strawberries and I was very content for the night.

Hope you guys enjoyed the food post! I love sharing good meals with photos =P

Kokiri Korean Restaurant Review !

This post will be short and simple to get a glimpse of a Korean restaurant I tried a couple of weeks ago.

A few pages of their menu below. Everything looked so good!

First up is Pajun/pajeon, or the Korean green onion pancake with seafood. I usually like most restaurant's pajun, but this one was exceptionally good. The octopus/or squid pieces inside were nice and tender and not chewy at all, which tends to be the case with a lot of restaurants. The batter was also not overly thick and had the nice crisp to the bottom of it as well.

Now my personal favorite dish, dukbokki/toppokki, was next and I usually order this wherever I can if they serve it. I liked that the sauce wasn't too over the top spicy but still had a kick. The rice cakes were nice and chewy and the added slices of fish cake is a plus. 

Now probably the most worth it dish was this Kalbi tang aka kalbi/short rib soup. It was packed with flavor, loaded with meat, and had veggies and egg dropped into it. The soup was very robust and full and had almost a creamy like consistency to it without the actual dairy. 

They also had a typical assortment of banchan (side dishes). My favorites are usually the potato salad, fish cake, and cucumber kimchi. They're version of the cucumber kimchi was by far one of my favorites out of all the ones i've tried.

I highly recommend coming here for dinner if you want good Korean food at a good price. You know a place is good when everyone in the restaurant is Korean except you! The only negative I have to say about the place is the service since it did take some time to get served and some of the Korean servers can seem to be rude.

If you can get over that (or just go with someone who can speak Korean) then go check this place out.

The restaurant is located south of Seattle in Federal Way.

Myung-Dong Soft Tofu House-Korean Restaurant

Today's restaurant review is on this Korea Tofu House located in the U-district of Seattle.

 

 

 

Located right on the side of 'The Ave' (what most UW and Seattlites call it)aka. University Avenue, it is a small Korean restaurant at the bottom of some stairs off a side street (Brooklyn).

 

 

sorry i couldn't rotate this picture for some reason

One of my favorite parts of eating at a Korean restaurant is the Banchan, or small appetizer dishes. (sorry if that's not 100% correct). We had Nappa Cabbage kimchee, this sweet soy potatoe dish, the korean pancake, seasoned mung bean sprouts, and seasoned fish cake. The potatoe one was my favorite.

 

Then my friend and I shared a Dokbokki to Toppokki ,i'm not sure on the romanization for this one either! I thought it was one of the better ones i've had but just wished it had the fishcake in it. My friend said it still doesn't compare to her favorite one she had where it had spam and cheese and all this other good stuff.

  

For my main entree, I had the mixed tofu soup which had the soft tofu, seafood of shrimp and clams, and beef. The waitress also cracked a raw egg over it while it was sizzling hot, which is one of my favorite parts.

 

They didn't ask for how spicy I wanted it to be so I was a bit scared at first that it would be too spicy. But it surprisingly wasn't and was very tasty. It is a little bit on the saltier side so for me it is a must mixing the soup with rice.

 

This was my second time here and I would probably come again if I am craving for Korean food and i'm in the area. The pricing is reasonable, but the only down side is one of the older Korean ladies that works there. Not sure if she was having a bad day, but she had a lot of attitude and it would be funny watching her and her facial expressions to.

 

The service is fast, don't get me wrong, but if you don't mind their shifty attitude, then you should check this place out anyways for the food.