Give Me Some Food

Each year I throw the most amazing Oscar party known to man. Sometimes the food is themed to the movies, sometimes not. Yet prior to this party and to creating the menu for it, I try to at least see the five movies up for best picture. I just realized that I hadn’t seen even one: 

“Hey sweetie, can we go see Good Night and Good Luck.”

“That isn’t playing anymore at the Embarcadero.”

“It’s over in West Portal.”

“Isn’t that movie in black and white?”

“Yup. It’s up for Best Picture.”

“But I hate artsy movies. And I get bored and then you fall asleep and I’m left watching a boring movie.”

“We can go to Korean Barbeque first.”

“Done.”

I don’t even think I need to extrapolate on the saying “the way to a man’s heart is through is stomach”. Actually in this case it was more like “the way to get a man to do something for you, is through his stomach.”

As we passed the place, it was packed, so I hopped out of the car to go put our name in.

“Put our name in” is actually kind of a lie. By that I mean take a number. Probably because if they took names there would be too many reservations for Park and Kim. Ok, that wasn’t very funny. Anyway it took 25 minutes to get a number alone. Note that if you have a party of 5 or more, you can get a reservation.

We basically ended up waiting for an hour in an area that looked like this:

 
Note, it looks like the quality of this picture is awful, but really it's just smokey. When I told my mom she said “that is so bad for your lungs!” This is probably true, but think about the people that work there! Also, this might be a good time to mention your clothing. Let me just say, whatever you wear there, you won’t want to wear it again until you wash it. Any clothes that need to be dry-cleaned are probably a bad idea. Felix and I describe the smell as smoked pig. This is a little silly because it should really be smoked cow- but pig is just funnier to me.

We finally sat down and ordered a  Kal Bi and a Bu Gol Gi (sp?)- basically two servings of raw cow- I think the Kal Bi is fattier (and therefore tastier) than the Bu Gol Gi. Before these came out, they inundated us with side dishes.

I hear that they are all technically called Kimchee. But the only one that registers as Kimchee with me is the cabbage with red sauce.

Hmmm- I tried Kimchee once in college and I didn’t like it

 

I wonder if I still don’t like it.

 

Yup, still don’t like it.

Though I must admit, it was grosser in college and I hear it’s an acquired taste. In college I also made the mistake of saying that Kimchee was the worst thing I’d ever tasted in my life, in front of one of Felix’s Korean friends. I thought I was being cute in a bratty kind of way. Now, I just know I was being a brat.

Then the meat came with a pair of scissors and tongs

 

Our server cut it up in front of us and then we got to cook it.

 

 Yes, cook it. There is a pit of burning coals in front of you. This makes this restaurant a little awkward for romantic dates where you want to lean across the table. Why? Because, well, you would be scorched and burnt skin isn’t very romantic. What is romantic is this is one time when Felix takes over the cooking. It always makes me laugh how guys are just drawn to bbq. I guess the pit of flames makes it masculine and therefore ok to be involved with. But it was really nice that he took over, because those coals were hot!!

The meat is really wonderful. The sauce is just sweet and salty enough but it’s not dripping with anything that resembles sweet and sour Chinese sauce. They also brought out some Kimchee tofu soup (“on the house”) which I really liked. Go figure. The side dishes and rice that they give you are definitely needed because the beef is very fatty and rich. You need something to cut it with.

So towards the end of the meal there were some leftovers. Felix wanted to take them home.

“We’ll just take the rest of this to-go”

“Then Paxxer (the name of our Prius) will smell like smoked pig.”

“ok, well then I’ll just finish the rest now.”

“ok. no. we’ll take it home.”

The fact that Felix thought taking the food in a doggie bag and taking the food in his stomach were the same thing is funny to me.

Good Night and Good Luck was just ok for me. I thought I was watching a movie that I know I should like and the acting was great, but it just didn’t hold my attention.

Or maybe I couldn’t get over how the room smelled like smoked pig…

Brothers Korean
4128 Geary Blvd (bet 5th and 6th)
415-387-7991