agh, the other toe

Spent a few hours out with my buddy Tom today. We hit Manimal in Itaewon at my suggestion. Tom got pulled pork and mashed potatoes; I got a big honkin' three-meat platter, which came with three sides as well. I chose mashed potatoes, cole slaw, and mac and cheese as my sides. For my meats, I went with pulled pork, andouille sausage, and brisket. Everything was brought out on a single platter, but we didn't realize that that's what had happened until the waitress (a foreign chick; she presumably speaks Korean) saw our confusion and told us both our orders were on the same tray. So I gave Tom half the pulled pork and one of the mashed-potato sides, and we dug in. I'd originally wanted this to be my treat, especially since I knew I'd be eating expensively, but Tom insisted on paying, which made me feel guilty for ordering so much. I've promised to pay for the next meal. Here's the platter:

two meals brought out on one tray

The meal was... okay. I got the feeling that Manimal had gone downhill a bit. The brisket—normally my favorite cut of beef—was a bit dry. So was the andouille. The pulled pork was fantastic, and Tom and I both agreed the mac-and-cheese side was quite good (Tom "borrowed" some of my mac and cheese). We were both disappointed in the potatoes, which Tom described as "nothing to write home about." The potatoes tasted as if they'd come from a powdered pack, like what you'd take when you go camping. An expensive place like Manimal ought to use real potatoes. Before we entered the restaurant, I had told Tom I wanted to order and share one of Manimal's grilled half-chickens; I'd remembered the chicken from when I'd gone to the restaurant with John McCrarey once; the bird had turned out to be surprisingly awesome. Alas, the new Manimal menu offered only "pieces" of chicken (with no specifics as to whether those pieces were white or dark meat). And I hate to say it, but our waitress, a foreign chick... well, she smelled kinda sour and sweaty, and that did not improve the ambiance. I feel bad mentioning her body odor since (1) I don't exactly smell like a rose myself, and (2) food-service people work hard and get a lot of shit from the general public. But I smelled what I smelled. The nose don't lie.

My after-meal tradition with Tom has always been to grab dessert and hang out somewhere. We were both content to hit a local convenience store, get ourselves some ice cream, and just hang out on the store's shady front porch, which had a row of chairs for just that purpose. So there we sat, on an Itaewon hillside—two aging, mid-fifties dudes just a-watching the foot and car traffic pass by both in front of us and a little beneath us. 

Tom told me about his adventure getting to Itaewon: he had started on the opposite side of Namsan and reasoned that he could find a shortcut by walking over the mountain. This turned out to be more complicated than it had seemed, and Tom got lost; his Google app was useless for navigating.* Based on his descriptions, I surmised he had somehow ended up on the 둘레길/dulle-gil, a sort of loop trail (or not-quite-loop-trail in Namsan's case: the loop doesn't go all the way around) that runs most of the way around the mountain's midsection like an enormous and unevenly shaped hula hoop. It's actually a really nice walk if you've never done it, and for all I know, the loop around the mountain may finally have been completed. Back when I taught at Dongguk University during the 2014-15 academic year and lived in the Namsan-foothills area, I would do the dulle-gil every once in a while, and I'd reach a point where it'd be necessary to turn around. Whether that's still true, I have no idea; maybe the loop is a true loop now. If there's one thing I've learned about Korean trails and walking paths, it's that they're always being worked on, so anything's possible. Anyway, Tom ended up finding his way downhill to a road with the help of a lady who was also descending the mountain, and once he reached the road, he grabbed a cab and rode to Itaewon.

So we had our rib-sticking meal, hung out a spell, then grabbed different cabs and went our separate ways. My former student Nathan, whom I'd taught back in 2011 and 2012 in Centreville, Virginia, is in East Asia with his family. They arrived in Korea a few days ago but have skipped off to Japan for a week; there had been a chance that I would meet Nathan & Co. this weekend, but the Japan trip suddenly came up, and I'll now be meeting Nathan sometime next weekend. I was thinking of taking a long walk tonight in preparation for a possible walk with Nathan, but for whatever reason, my left big toe is really bothering me right now (no, there's no ulcer), so I might rest my feet a bit more before risking a long walk anywhere. You get to a certain age, and the problems just keep on coming. If it's not one thing, it's always another, and I'm a creaky, heaving mess. First the right toe, now the left toe...

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*That's why, if you read Korean, you should use the Naver app. It's far superior to Google, and it's being updated all the time.