a different kind of Chinese food

Although the menu in a Korean-style Chinese restaurant will normally include almost as many items as can be found on an American-Chinese menu, when people think of Korean-style Chinese food, they think of only a handful of items, ordered over and over ad nauseam: black-bean noodles (jjajang-myeon), sweet-and-sour pork (tangsuyuk), spicy seafood soup (jjam-bbong), fried rice (bokkeum-bap), and thick-skinned potstickers (mandu).

On Thursday night, I met my buddy Charles to hand him some small gifts I had bought in France for him and his wife to enjoy. Since we were in the restaurant-rich Nakseongdae neighborhood close to Seoul National University, we decided to walk down a popular street and pick a restaurant on the fly. The place we ended up at, Mara Hweogweo (pronounce that "hwaw-gwaw"), was a type of Chinese restaurant, apparently staffed by ethnic Koreans of Chinese nationality (ex-nationality?). Charles waxed rhapsodic about the ma (same Chinese character as in Ang-ma, the devil), a sort of peppercorn that imparts a special flavor—and an impressive kick—to whatever dish it's applied to. The dishes in this restaurant would feature the ma rather prominently; I let Charles do all the deciding since none of this was familiar to me. (NB: Charles will soon appear in the comments to explain these dishes in greater depth and detail. I asked him to do so because I knew I was going to forget all the names and terms he was throwing at me.)

We got a dish that, on the surface, had the trappings of a shabu-shabu: there was a divided bowl into which had been placed two types of broth—hot and mild. Off to the side were fresh vegetables, and as with shabu-shabu, the expectation was that we'd be adding the veggies into the boiling broth au fur et à mesure as we ate. There was a spicy, peanut-based dipping sauce with bits of raw garlic in it; there were frozen-solid rice cakes and little mandu waiting to be dumped into the soup; there were a few types of pasta and pasta-like ingredients that mystified me; and of course, there was the meat: paper-thin shavings of beef and lamb, for Charles had ordered—and I had agreed to this—a sort of combo meal. On the side, we got a dish that wasn't exactly pork tangsuyuk, but that tasted good and served as a way to punctuate the spicy meal with a bit of sweetness and crunch.

Charles loves the ma peppercorn enough to chew on it all day long; in the end, I didn't share his level of enthusiasm, but I did come to respect the flavor that the ma imparted to our dish. This is a bit like my appreciation for ginger: use it sparingly in a recipe, and it's just fine, but please don't ask me to gnaw on a whole, raw root. I can take only so much.

Overall, this was a novel experience for me, and I'm now curious to go back to that restaurant, or to one like it, to continue exploring the menu with its panoply of ma-infused offerings. This was also a welcome departure from the usual Korean-style Chinese fare. Ordering the same five things all the time can get pretty boring (even though I tend to do something like that when ordering pizza).

Apologies in advance for the blurry photos.

The sign outside:

The veggies:

Two little sides, one of which we both neglected during the meal:

The yin-yang bowl with mild (left) and spicy (right) broths:

Meat and carbs:

Peanut sauce, before I mixed it:

The crunchy sweet-and-sour pork (with glutinous rice flour in the batter):

Same:

Aboil:

I'll definitely be back this way. There's more on the menu to explore.