Wednesday, December 21, 2016

¡adiós, Tomás—y feliz cumpleaños!

Tonight, I belatedly celebrated my buddy Tom's birthday by treating him to dinner at his favorite galmaegi-sal (grilled pork) restaurant, the reconstituted Seorae—the same place he took me for my birthday. Tom has something of a Seorae fixation, I think; it's definitely his go-to restaurant. I can see why: the meat is damn good, and tonight's dinner was far less expensive than I'd thought it would be.

Tom is now off to the Philippines this coming Friday morning. His wife and son went ahead of him because he had to finish up his university-related chores, but now he'll be joining his family for a long, long vacation where it's eternally warm. Tom has asked me, several times, whether I'd ever be interested in visiting the Philippines, but my answer has always been to make a face and shake my head no: I'm not a fan of heat and humidity, which means most of this planet holds no interest for me. Not Southeast Asia, not South Asia, not South America, etc. No, thanks. Maybe I'd go if I had half my current number of sweat glands.

Safe travels, man. Say hi to Duterte for me.



6 comments:

Maven said...

Swine is divine!

Charles said...

I've never been hyper excited about Seorae. I'm pretty sure that they stiff you on the portions, or at least they did the last time I was at one of their places. This doesn't change the actual meat you are getting or anything, but it does not inspire loyalty when a place tells you that a portion of meat is 200 grams when it is most clearly not.

Kevin Kim said...

Charles,

That could be why the meal was so cheap.

My boss once told me of a time he actually took a kitchen scale to a restaurant and ended up haranguing the staff for giving him an underweight steak (he did take "pre-cooked weight" into account).

Kevin Kim said...

S,

Swine is indeed divine.

Charles,

Expanding on my & your previous thought: yeah, there's no way we put away a kilo of pork. We would've been a lot fuller. I don't doubt that Seorae sneakily holds back.

Charles said...

What I can't understand is why they do this. Even at smaller (i.e., actual) portion sizes, the prices are still quite reasonable, and it would be well worth going. Why bother lying about the amounts and risk alienating people?

I guess they might have done a risk/reward assessment and determined that extra customers brought in by the larger advertised portions outweigh people who might be turned off by blatantly unethical business practices.

Kevin Kim said...

C,

We all jus' suckaz, yo.