Snapshots from when I was plowing through my leftovers. Below is the last of my ravioli, plumped up with some shrimp plus some creamy white sauce and cheese:
And here's a carby meal of ddeokbokgi and kalguksu.
I think the kalguksu guy isn't doing so well. I could tell that he's switched from the more expensive brisket cut (양지/yangji) to the far less expensive eye-round cut (홍두깨살/hongduggae-sal). This cut needs to be cooked a very long time to become tender, and that's not happening here, resulting in very chewy beef. It's not bad, but it's sad to see this happening. The guy's losing money. When I first wrote up this restaurant, I casually noted that being generous with beef is not the way to be profitable. As I wrote at the time:
I can't say that I've ever had brisket kalguksu before, ever. It feels new. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe it's been around all this time, and I just never noticed until now. But I was happy to have the brisket, and the guy who served me didn't stint on it the way some Viet places do: some of those places give you only three or four thin, grudging strips of meat. Meanwhile, my soup bowl was full of brisket, by contrast, which makes me wonder how long this guy's business is going to last. Generosity in the restaurant biz doesn't usually lead to prosperity. Restaurant cooking is often the art of seeming generous. I'm not saying my kalguksu was like a bowl of nothing-but-brisket, but there was more than enough beef in the bowl for this not to be the usual "use the beef merely to punctuate the flavor" situation. Meat is generally used sparingly in Korean cuisine for the practical reason that it's pretty expensive, especially compared to US prices, and especially when it comes to beef in particular.
The above feels prophetic now. I don't want to see this guy's business go under, but if he's already cutting corners, then that's a sign things aren't so good.
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