last night's dinner

Wednesday night, I met up with my buddy Charles in his neighborhood (not far from Seoul National University, where he teaches) to go have a dinner of lamb skewers. I like lamb, and I'd seen lamb skewers in Incheon's Chinatown years ago, but I recalled that those skewers seemed mighty small—as I said in a private email, I'd need at least ten just to feel half-full. Well, tonight's lamb skewers were also tiny, but they packed a lot of flavor and proved to be quite delicious. You're supposed to eat them slowly, savoring them in a way that the French or the Japanese might appreciate.

As you see in the pic below, the place we went to was called Lo Hyang Lamb Skewers (로향 양꼬치/lo hyang yang ggochi). With a big, unsubtle sign like that, I was expecting big, unsubtle flavors. I was also famished because I hadn't eaten anything all day and had eaten little more than two Paris Baguette salads the previous day.

We went in and sat down; the place had a modest crowd and was obviously popular with students and young couples who didn't seem disturbed by the presence of two old, foreign farts in their midst—one slim and white, one bulkily simian and off-white.

Lo Hyang Yang Ggochi (Lo Hyang Lamb Skewers)

I basically sat back and let Charles do all the explaining and all the work because this was (I think) my first time in a lamb-skewer place. (I may have gone to this sort of restaurant some years back, but if I did, I don't remember much of anything about the experience.*) We ended up ordering three types of lamb skewers and two "main" dishes—a stir-fried beef dish and a crispy, sauced, breaded-eggplant dish.

The way it works (from now on, just assume Charles explained all of this to me; if I get anything wrong, that's on me) is that the skewers of raw lamb arrive: we'd ordered three kinds of lamb, ten skewers each. The skewers are placed on a small rack over a coal-fired grill. They're held down by magnets to minimize chaos, and the rectangular rack slides back and forth over the coals, which induces the skewers to roll, thus evenly cooking the meat. The whole thing is quite ingenious. When the meat is cooked (with lots of lovely dripping fat causing tiny, spattering flareups in the coals), it's pulled off the heat, then chopsticks are used to push the meat off the skewers. The meat is then picked up, dipped in spicy powder, and eaten. Quite a nice system, and it forces ravenous people like me to eat more slowly. I had some difficulty, at first, figuring out how to remove the cooked meat from the skewers, but in the end, I simply imitated Charles. It was a lot like going to an unfamiliar church, not knowing the specific liturgy but following along with the people who know what they're doing. The next time I come to this place, I'll have a better idea of what to do.

Small vegetable side dishes also came with our meal, but the lamb was definitely meant to be the star of the show. Charles and I ate our way through the thirty skewers of meat, then, per Charles's suggestion, we ordered two "main" courses. 

Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, here's the grill in action:

The bottom skewers gently rotate as the grill slides back and forth over the coals.

Here's our order of three types of lamb skewers:

I knew I wouldn't remember the names of the types of lamb Charles ordered. We had a chance to look at a menu again, though, before we ordered our other dishes, so I photographed relevant pages from the menu. Our lamb skewers were: 

(1) 양꼬치(양삼겹) yang ggochi (yang samgyeop): standard lamb skewers (belly cut?)
(2) 늑깐살(갈비살) neukggan-sal (galbi-sal): lamb entrecôte skewers (between-the-ribs meat)
(3) 마라양꼬치(달콤매콤한맛) mara yang ggochi (dalkom/maekomhan mat): Mara-pepper (a.k.a. Szechuan/Sichuan-pepper) skewers, sweet and spicy

On the menu below, can you match up the printed Korean with the Korean nomenclature I used above? Even if you don't know Korean, I bet you can do it.

To be honest, I kept expecting gristle, but the meat we ate was simply fatty and delicious, thank Cthulhu. The skewers were excellent, but we were ready for more, so we ordered one dish that Charles knew he liked and one dish that struck my fancy.

First up was an eggplant dish in which the eggplants had been breaded and fried until crispy, then stir-fried with other vegetables and sauced with a sweet glaze. I like eggplant and was surprised to see how well the soft eggplant flesh endured the double frying.

Below is a look at the eggplant dish:

right-hand page, third from the top: 어향가지/eohyang gaji (eggplants seasoned fish-style)

The other "main" dish we ordered looked like American-style Chinese crispy beef from the photo, but it turned out to be a simpler stir-fried beef dish:

upper-right photo: 쯔란소고기/jjeuran sogogi** (sogogi = beef)

We were most of the way through the main dishes before I finally remembered to take a picture of them. Both dishes were loaded with onions, but the beef dish was heavily spiced and seasoned with a cumin-forward combination of flavors, so I tried some onions, gambling that the strong accent of the spices and seasonings would blunt the "onioniness" of the onion.

top: eggplant dish
bottom: beef dish

I ended up eating most of the food. Overall, I thought this restaurant was a good choice by Charles, who is showing me different restos in his neighborhood. I'll probably revisit this place, Lo Hyang, on my own time. Thus far, Charles is batting a thousand. Lo Hyang goes on the shelf of good memories along with our previous restaurant, The Melting Pot.

__________

*I now remember that I was in western Seoul during a long walk a few years ago when I stopped to eat at a Chinese place that served the usual Korean-style Chinese dishes plus lamb skewers. I didn't order the skewers, but I did see the clever devices for grilling the skewers mounted into each table.

**Jjeuran is explained here. Rough translation via Google Translate:

n. plant An annual herb from the parsley family. The height is about 20 cm, pink or white flowers bloom in spring, and the fruit is long and oval with pointed ends. The seeds are used as a spice in foods such as soups, curries, and stews. Its origin is the Middle East and it is cultivated in places such as Egypt, India, and Morocco.

I asked ChatGPT to provide me with an English translation for jjeuran, but it couldn't give me a satisfactory one. Korean Wikipedia says jjeuran is cumin (see here).