Thursday with Dan

I met longtime commenter Daniel for dinner and dessert Thursday (June 4) evening. This was our second time meeting face to face. Dan is a busy guy with a huge family and a concomitant need to work many jobs to keep up with life. Although I'm only beginning to get to know him, he already strikes me as one of the hardest-working people I've ever met. How he stays so damn cheerful is a mystery; I'd have been worn out years ago. What's his secret? Insanity?

Neither of us likes Itaewon that much, but Dan showed me two places I'd known nothing about, and they were both winners. Dan had suggested several spots we could eat at, ranging from Amurrican food to Turkish to Middle Eastern to Russian to East Asian. He mentioned a very good Chinese-style dumpling place, and that intrigued me. Since one of my default modes, when cooking, is to go Middle Eastern/Mediterranean/Tex-Mex/American (without really knowing what I'm doing), I decided against American and Turkish/Middle-Eastern options. While Russian sounded intriguing, I don't think I was quite in the mood for Russian food. So—dumplings. Something about that pulled at me.

Here are Dan's pics first. A word of warning: Either his camera makes my head look huge and my shoulders look really narrow, or I naturally have a huge head and narrow shoulders, things I normally don't see when I look in a mirror. (What I do see is my gut!)

our Mapa dubu

"Mapa tofu," said Dan as we ordered a dish to supplement our Chinese-style mandu. In my head, though, I was thinking the pronunciation was "Mapo tofu." But when I saw the Korean side of our menu, I saw that it was spelled Mapa, not Mapo, in hangeul. Once home, I looked up the difference; it turns out that Mapo is the Anglo pronunciation (based on the original Chinese) and Mapa is the Korean pronunciation. And we're in Korea, so it's a good thing I hadn't opened my stupid mouth.

The tofu dish came with bits of ground meat (pork?) in it, and the slightly peppery spice was good. I've had this dish before, but the taste is intriguing, so I think I ought to eat this more often if there's a less carby variety of it (maybe made with xanthan gum instead of cornstarch as the thickener). Dan ordered extra rice for what was a two-person portion.

Trivia: The name Mapo/Mapa apparently comes from a person. The AI god says:

In Chinese, the dish is written as 麻婆豆腐 (mápó dòufu). The two characters that make up "mapo" break down as follows:

• Ma (麻): Short for mazi (麻子), meaning "pockmarks."
• Po (婆): Means "old woman" or "grandma."

The Story Behind the Name

The dish was allegedly invented in 1862 at a small restaurant in Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province. The restaurant was run by a woman named Mrs. Chen, who had pockmarks on her face (often a result of surviving smallpox).

Because the locals affectionately referred to her as "Chen Mapo" (Pockmarked Grandma Chen), the incredible tofu stew she cooked and sold became known simply as Mapo Tofu.

While "mapo" is a proper noun honoring a specific person in its origin, it has evolved into a well-known culinary proper noun—the specific name of the spicy, numbing, and iconic Sichuan dish.

fat head, narrow shoulders, and Mapa dubu between us

If Dan hadn't kept reminding me to take photos by announcing he'd be taking his own, I'd have simply plowed my way through the food without recording a single thing.

Oh, right: There was a slight wait to get into the place, which was called Jonny Dumpling in English but with a large-font Chinese sign out front that turned out to say Gyo Ja (see more below), i.e., what the Japanese call gyoza, which is their name for the potstickers that Koreans call mandu. As we were waiting in the street, an interesting pair of people who'd gotten there before us—a man and a woman—were conversing in Spanish.

The Itaewon area is traditionally full of non-Koreans, and it often feels as though it's not fully part of Korea, which may be one reason why I'm not thrilled with the place. As I've said repeatedly, I didn't come to Korea just to hang out in a foreigner's bubble, but with that said, I admit I often get the foreign-food jones, and if the dish is something I can't or don't make for myself, then every once in a while, I have little choice but to visit cultural islands like Itaewon.

Dan had also noted earlier that Itaewon looked as though it were both dying out and being radically redeveloped. From what I saw, many familiar storefronts had been shuttered, and some new buildings had appeared along the main drag. I wondered aloud whether all of this was being guided by a coherent vision, and I compared whatever was happening in Itaewon to former president Lee Myung-bak's vision when he developed the Cheonggye-cheon, the creek that got reopened, re-landscaped, and turned into an attraction for tourists and citizens alike. The coherence of Lee's vision—whatever else you might think about the man and his corruption—was impressive, and despite some false starts at the beginning of the rejuvenated creek's life, Lee stuck with it, kicked out the former merchants, and made the creek area into a thriving, repurposed place. Dan added that Lee was also the driving force behind the development of the Four Rivers trail that I love so much. I hadn't known that, but now that I know, I'm grateful to Lee. But what force is guiding the changes happening in Itaewon? It's mostly my own lack of fluency in Korean that's preventing me from knowing (and/or my own laziness when it comes to online research in English*). 

overhead view of the mandu madness

One thing you often see with Chinese-style dumplings is the "skirt" or the "lace" made from a slurry of water and flour, plus maybe a bit of cornstarch and vinegar.

me, with swollen head, suddenly remembering to take my own pics thanks to Dan's prompting

A double selfie (an ourselvesie?)... I look more proportionate here.

For whatever reason, the above and below pictures were horizontally flipped when I got them (selfie mode?), so I flipped them back in my camera before uploading. Not a big deal, and if you're not used to East Asian culture, you might not even have noticed the backwards Chinese had I not flipped the photos aright. But people who know how Chinese characters work would see something amiss right away.

another ourselvesie (see the napkin that's fallen on my foot?)

After this very nice dinner, in which we ate two ten-mandu servings (I probably ate more by accident) plus that two-person portion of Mapa dubu, we thanked the ladies running the place and went down the street a bit to a new(?) crêperie that Dan knew about, run by a lone woman. Unlike at the tofu restaurant, this place required us to navigate a Korean ordering kiosk, one of those electronic things that uses a touch screen to take your order. I got a banana-strawberry crêpe, which also included a sprinkling of cereal for crunch, some marshmallow fluff for texture, and of course—Nutella, an idea straight from Europe. My first bite of the crêpe when it came out, though, was painful because the strawberries inside it were still frozen, and one of my molars caught the full brunt of that freeze. Dan, for his part, got what struck me as an East Asian monstrosity, a culinary version of Konglish: a crêpe with Nutella, mozzarella, and some sort of cheesecake-y filling. According to Dan, it was very good, but I told him frankly that I just couldn't envision pairing chocolate with mozzarella. I did concede, though, that the cheesecake-y filling probably did a lot to mediate between the chocolate and the mozz. It's possible to layer disparate flavors and textures together well if you add something to mediate the extremes. I was utterly uninterested in trying Dan's mutant dessert, but he seemed to enjoy it. He also discovered that he could get a free coffee if he scanned a QR code, gave the food a rating, and did some other things. Two iced coffees came out, and since I'm not a coffee drinker, I took only a few sips of my free drink.

Here's Dan's pic of his crêpe:

Yes, Texas Papa is the place's name. God only knows why. Crêpes don't exactly scream "Texas."

My right shoulder appears to be almost nonexistent in this photo.

And here are my pics:

Gyoza?

See that sign? When I got home, I had to look up one of the above yellow-font, red-background Chinese characters. The sign turns out to say Gyo (餃) Ja (子), which I assume is the Korean way to say gyoza (dumpling/s) the way the Japanese do. The gyo turns out to mean ddeok/떡, or chewy Korean rice cakes, maybe signifying the dumpling's outer layer. The ja can mean "son" or "offspring," but I don't know what ja means in this specific context.

AI adds this:

In Chinese, 餃子 (simplified: 饺子) translates to "dumpling." The word is pronounced "jiǎo zi" in Mandarin (roughly as jyow-dze).

Breakdown and Meaning

• Jiǎo (餃): Means "dumpling" or "crescent-shaped."
• Zi (子): A common noun suffix in Chinese (meaning "child" or "small thing") that is added to create the full noun.

Culturally, Chinese dumplings (historically shaped like ancient gold ingots) are a staple of Chinese cuisine and symbolize wealth, family unity, and good luck.

The resto's English name: Jonny Dumpling. See all of the blue-ribbon awards the place has won?

The red-font Chinese beneath the English says 천천복복/天天福福/cheon-cheon bok-bok, which I guess is literally thousand-thousand happinesses-happinesses. Is that the resto's Asian name and not Gyo Ja? I have no idea. The AI god suggests the name means something like "Daily Blessings/Happiness/Fortune."

Our plate of Mapa dubu, which came out first and was like an appetizer:

Quite good... I might have to go back and try it again.

side dishes

The AI god guesses that the shredded, kimchi-ish side dish is:

This dish is likely Zhacai, a type of Chinese pickled mustard green often served as a side dish.

I should've just asked the ladies what it was.

As for the yellow veggies: The Japanese call them daikon (radishes); the Japanese-occupied Koreans called them dak-ggwang, riffing off the Japanese pronunciation, but in modern Korean, given all the attempts to recover Korean terms after 36 years of Japanese occupation, the yellow-stained radishes are now called danmuji, or roughly, "sweet, pickled radish."

Other words recovered from the Japanese:

국민학생/gukmin haksaeng → /초등학생/chodeung haksaeng
     from "national-citizen student" to "beginner-level (elementary) student"

야끼만두/yaki-mandu** → 군만두/gun-mandu
     from Jpn. "fried mandu" to Kor. "fried mandu"

with a serving of tofu and rice in my dish

The rice is all carbs, and the sauce is probably full of cornstarch and thus also carby, but the tofu and the bits of ground meat are carb-free.

I got a good shot of the "skirt" for one portion of our mandu.

I deliberately broke these up for easier eating.

As we strolled over to the dessert spot, Dan pointed out this burger place that, according to him, makes good regular burgers (not smash burgers). Note the signage, though: On the awning, the place is called NO MERCY BURGER. The building's roof, though, calls it NORMECY BURGER. Hilariously, and this may be hard to see, the NORMECY has a graffito that looks like a proofreader's correction saying to move the "R" to in between the "E" and the "C." So it's supposed to be "No Mercy." I found the typo and the correction hilarious, but the mistake gives the place character.

One thing I've long wondered, though, is how signs with glaring misprints even get made. Is there no final proofreading of the sign's text before the design is painted or etched or chiseled onto a surface? I mean, I've made some boneheaded proofreading mistakes for books that then went on to be printed, but my mistakes couldn't possibly be as embarrassing as fucking up signage on a building. "Quality Learing Center," anyone?

At least it has character, and someone recognized the mistake.

my own pic of the crêpes

Above: Remember Dan's pic of me taking a photo of something across from me? Above is what I'd been taking a picture of.

another pic of the signage (and no language errors)

I've eaten most of the bananas in this photo.

The crêpes proved to be quite delicious, we both agreed. Interesting note: In French, crêpe is pronounced "krep"; in English, it's commonly pronounced "kreyp" (and spelled without the circumflex), and in Korean, it's pronounced "kreh-peh," almost as if the French word had traveled through German first, where it had picked up the German tendency to pronounce the final "e" in words ending in -e.

And that was dinner and dessert out in Itaewon. Dan and I, on our way home, both started out going in the same direction, but I got off to transfer at Yaksu Station whereas Dan went farther to transfer later. My blood sugar is going to be a smoking ruin Friday morning, but I at least no longer have to worry about a French wedding feast jacking up my blood sugar one more time before my mid-July hospital visit (cardiac doc this time).

One last thing: Dan's wife was apparently not impressed with Jonny Dumplng when Dan took her there. I thought it was pretty damn good, and I want to go back.

Yes, even though it's in Itaewon.

__________

*Just Google "the driving force behind the project to renew Itaewon in S Korea." What's happening now is not the vision of a single person.

**I would ideally romanize the expression as yakgi-mandu, with a very strong hard "g" sound, but the accepted romanization is yaki-mandu. It makes no sense and leads foreigners to mispronounce the Korean, but whatever. The official Korean romanization of 떡볶이 as tteokbokki also makes zero sense to me. So I get rebellious and romanize it more self-consistently as ddeok-bokgi, a spelling that's less likely to lead a foreigner astray. But I'm not consistent with my rebellion, which I recognize is a problem. But the greater problem is that no romanization system is ever going to be universally satisfactory to all people.