I know I promised the last of my formal Bombay restaurant reports today but it is has long been established that I am a liar. Also, do you really care? I’ll have that report on Thursday. Possibly. In the meantime, here is a report on a one-dish meal eaten on one of our program outings from Seoul in February. During our second week here we woke up bright and early one morning and headed off in a coach to the DMZ. Early rising and some snow-related delays aside, it was a fascinating day—though I never need to go into that cramped North Korean tunnel again. But this is not a travel blog and so I am not going to tell you about what you can see if you go on one of these DMZ trips from Seoul. All I am going to tell you about is the lunch we ate. Fittingly, it was centered on budae jjigae or “army/military” jigae.

You may already know what budae jjigae entails. If not, the Wikipedia entry will quickly bring you up to speed. It’s a dish born out of historical exigency which has taken on a life of its own as iconic comfort food for younger generations who don’t have the complicated history with the period that produced that older people who lived through it do. There is nothing complex about it, but if you like mildly spicy stews with a lot of things in them, then there’s a good chance you’ll like budae jjigae. And if you ever visit the DMZ you’ll certainly have lots of opportunities to try it. I can’t say for certain as I never saw a menu but I suspect budae jjigae is most of what the restaurant we ate at, Jeongni, serves. The restaurant was chosen by the outfit that organized our outings in/from Seoul. It’s located in a mini-restaurant row of sorts and I suspect all of the other places make most of their money by serving budae jjigae to tourists as well.

The restaurant is large enough—we took up most of the private’ish rooms in the back. Or they became private rooms because our large group filled them up. The tables were fitted with burners and large containers of assembled budae jjigae were sitting on them. All that remained for us to do was to turn them on and then turn the burners to low once everything began to bubble furiously. This we managed to do. After a first round of eating we added packets of ramen noodles to the broth, which we topped up from kettles on the table. Otherwise, we ate the stew with rice. Our kids were kindly also given a packet of laver/dried, seasoned seaweed each to eat with their rice. Banchan was limited: kimchi and that was pretty much it.

How was the budae jjigae? It hit the spot on a cold day (it had snowed that morning).

For a look at the restaurant and our repast, click on an image below to launch a larger slideshow. Scroll down to see what’s coming next.

Service was very attentive. I can’t tell you how much all of it cost as it was paid for through the company organizing our outings. But I doubt it was very much per head.

Alright, what’s next? I really would like to finish up my formal restaurant reports from Bombay on Thursday and will give it a good shot—it’s just that there’s a lot of pictures to process. Later on the weekend I’ll probably post another Seoul report and my very last Bombay report, involving a number of more informal meals. Let’s see how it goes.