The Downward Spiral, Part 3

So I know what you're thinking, yeah yeah, you had some beef in Argentina and you never looked back. You caved and started eating the hot dogs you bought for the dog.

No, that's not what happened. We returned to our normal life and our normal diet Rules. It was fine. For about a year.

Then sometime in the middle of 2006, I decided that we needed to try Korean food. We are enthusiastic San Francisco restaurant-goers, and we've tried just about every ethnic cuisine we can get our hands on. But for some reason, we never tried Korean. I guess we just thought it was all meat. But I'd read a review of New Korea House in Japantown and it talked about tofu soup and oyster pancakes, so we figured it would be a good place to try, with enough things we could eat.

We weren't prepared for the assault on our senses when we walked in. The smell of grilling meat nearly knocks you over from the minute you cross the threshold. And it smelled good.

We sat down and looked at the menu. We decided on a spicy crab soup and bbq shrimp. The waiter came to take our order.

Waiter: "Minimum two orders to bbq at the table."


Me: "Oh, sorry, we didn't realize. What should we do honey? Two orders of shrimp? There's nothing else here we can eat."

Jason: "Let's get the beef."

Me: "What? Really? Are you serious?"

Jason: "It looks really good. Everyone else is eating it."

The poor waiter stood there, while we hashed out our ethical crisis. He wasn't amused.

Jason: "We'll have the beef too."

Me: "You're eating it. Not me."

Okay, now you know what happened next. The beef came to the table, and it wasn't scary at all. It was fabulous. It was marinated and slightly sweet, and sliced very thin. We grilled it at the table and ate it with all the lovely kimchi and banchan that came with it. The shrimp were good too. And the spicy crab soup was sinus-clearingly delicious.

The meat had a weird effect on us. We were giddy. We drank beer and grilled meat, and all around us people were drinking beer and grilling meat and it was fun.

We started rationalizing again. Okay, this was bad. This is not organic meat. Who knows what kind of meat this is? But we're in Japantown. At a Korean restaurant. That's almost like traveling. That's almost like the New Rules.

We felt like little kids. Little kids with a secret.

New Korea House
1620 Post @ Buchanan