I’ve fallen a little behind on my goal of getting all my Seoul reports done by the middle of May. Okay, quite a bit behind. I’m going to try to catch up in a hurry though. Here first is a very image-heavy look at one of our favourite market outings in the city in early March, to Mangwon Market. Like Cheongnyangni Market, Mangwon Market is a traditional farmers’ market, which is to say it is a market where locals go to shop—though it’s quite a bit smaller than Cheongnyangni Market. Located in Mapo-gu, it’s more off the tourist map than Gwangjang Market, Namdaemun Market and Tongin Market—or Noryangjin Fish Market, for that matter. It’s a covered market and once you’re in it, the alleys are lined with cooked food vendors of various kinds. We visited on a Saturday morning and had a very nice time walking slowly through the crowded market, stopping to eat snacks along the way. We also bought some prepared foods to take away with us for dinner and some fresh seafood to cook in the upcoming week. And then as we were leaving the market we couldn’t resist stopping at a small restaurant for some noodle soup and mandu. Here is a look at it all. Continue reading
Author Archives: My Annoying Opinions
Bowmore 15, 1992 (Douglas Laing)
No, I haven’t already rolled back my commitment to slow the pace of my whisky reviewing and to restrict it only to bottles that have lain unopened for years in my stash. It’s only that I still have a few samples left over from before I left for Bombay in early January and I may as well get through all of them as well. And so here’s a Bowmore 15. This was distilled in 1992 and bottled in 2007 from a refill hogshead by Douglas Laing in their Old Malt Cask series. Back when this came out a lot of whisky geeks were still very wary about Bowmores distilled in the early 1990s. This was on account of the proximity to the long problematic preceding decade at the distillery. As I’ve noted before on the blog, my random sampling suggests that by the early 1990s most of those problems had been worked out. Indeed, I’ve had quite a few rather nice indie Bowmores distilled in the early 1990s. That’s not to say, of course, that there aren’t casks from that period that still bore/bear traces of the major problems of the distillate in the 1980s, particularly a strong soapy note. Let’s hope this cask is not one of those. When teenaged bourbon cask Bowmore is good it’s very good indeed, with that unique mix of smoke, fruit, florals and coastal notes. Let’s see where this one falls on the spectrum. Continue reading
April/May 2024
Now that I have made changes to my posting activity on the blog, I may as well also change the nature of my month-opening posts. Unlike in the past, I will no longer have long lists of potential whisky reviews for you to help me narrow down to 10-12. The whisky/booze reviews will be what they will be, based on what catches my fancy when I’m down in the whisky lair looking for a new bottle to open. So if you’re still interested in my whisky reviews, each week’s review will be a surprise. What I’m going to do instead, going forward, in these first-of-the-month posts is give you a glimpse at what was popular, or at least what was read a lot in the previous month on the blog. In other words, a look at my navel. In this particular case, April 2024 was, in terms of both page views and unique visitors, the busiest month in the blog’s history. Almost 21,000 unique visitors loaded almost 100,000 pages (yes, yes, I know, these aren’t particularly impressive numbers in the abstract). What were they looking at? Continue reading
Indian Accent IV (Delhi, March 2024)
Lunches at Indian Accent’s New Delhi mothership were highlights of my eating out in 2022 and 2023. I ate the express lunch tasting there with a friend in March 2022 and in January 2023 the missus and I ate the full tasting menu at lunch. Both of those meals were excellent. And so it was a foregone conclusion that we would return for another go at the lunch tasting when we were back in Delhi for a bit last month. And so it came to pass. Well, it was another very good meal but the streak was finally broken: taken as a whole, it was not at the level of the previous two meals. There were some very good dishes but the second, heavier half of the meal didn’t really do it for us for a number of reasons; and the meal as a whole felt more than a little disjointed. Here are the details. Continue reading
Highland Park 25, 1988 (Cadenhead)
At the start of April I noted that I am cutting down the the number of whiskies I review on the blog so that I can focus on finally drinking down all/most of the whisky I acquired over the last decade and a half. It’s going to be a slow campaign, with no more than four bottles projected to be opened and steadily consumed (with help from friends) each month. The campaign began two weeks ago with a Littlemill 23, 1989 from Archives; it continued last Monday with a Talisker 10 released in the 1990s. Here now to close out the month is a Highland Park 25 that was distilled in 1988 and bottled in 2013 by Cadenhead. It’s not a single cask but a batch release. Bottles went to both the European and US markets. Neither label notes a year of distillation or cask information but this is rather obviously sherry cask whisky in colour, aroma and flavour. Whiskybase says “sherry butts” and lists 1086 bottles. So probably a pair of butts—assuming, that is, that no Glendronach-style shenanigans were involved, in which case this might be from a clutch of 24 year old ex-bourbon casks that were dumped into “rejuvenated” sherry butts for an additional year before bottling. At any rate, I opened my bottle a few days ago and waited for it to settle down a bit before taking my initial notes. Here they are. Continue reading
Homshuk + Bodega 42 (Apple Valley, MN)
Late last fall I heard talk about a new Mexican market that had opened in Apple Valley. Before I could investigate, we went away for three months to Bombay and Seoul and I forgot all about it. And so when my friend Ben P. alerted me last week to the presence of Bodega 42, raving about everything they had bought there, it was only going to be a matter of time before I got there. Checking out their website, I discovered that they also have a restaurant right next to the market, named Homshuk. Accordingly, earlier this week the missus and I drove up to Apple Valley for lunch and a bit of shopping. This is what we found. Continue reading
Tim Ho Wan (Seoul, March 2024)
In my report on our meal at Grand Szechuan at the end of March I noted that in our three months away we had barely eaten any Chinese food. I listed two meals: one a Korean-Chinese lunch in Seoul and the other an Indian-Chinese takeout dinner in Delhi. Somehow I forgot about the third, which was the best of the three and the only non-hyphenated Chinese one of the three: dim sum at one of the Seoul outposts of the Tim Ho Wan empire. Tim Ho Wan, as you probably know, started out in 2009 as a no-frills, reasonably priced dim sum shop in Hong Kong, famously picking up a Michelin star. Multiple branches opened in Hong Kong (I’ve previously reported on a quick meal at the Central branch) and then all over the world (including the US). We’ve not eaten at Tim Ho Wan’s US locations but when we saw there were three in Seoul, we couldn’t resist. We ended up eating at the Samseong location in Gangnam. This is the flagship Seoul location and, most importantly, the largest of the three. A long wait seemed the least likely here and that hope proved true. After a brief wait we were seated and very quickly after that we we were eating. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Restaurant Alma, Winter 2024 (Minneapolis)
We welcomed ourselves back to Minnesota a few weeks ago with a big lunch at Grand Szechuan. The estranging effects of three months away are not so easy to shake off, however. Well, now that we’ve eaten dinner at Alma we’re truly back in Minnesota. Note: while the title of this post says “Winter 2024”, we ate there this past weekend, and not even the most pessimistic Minnesotan would say that April is winter. It’s just that this was part of their winter menu cycle; the switch over to spring is about to happen in a week or so, we were told. Well, whatever the season, a meal at Alma is a good thing; and this meal was a very good thing. Continue reading
Talisker 10, “Map Label”, 90s Bottling
As you may recall from my post to start this month, for the foreseeable future I am going to be posting fewer booze reviews on the blog. This is due to a desire to drink down the many bottles in stash accumulated over some 15 years. The plan is to open a bottle a week and gradually drink it down—with the occasional help of friends. The first bottle I opened as part of this campaign was the Littlemill 23, 1990 from Archives that I reviewed last week. That was a fruity bourbon cask. As I currently already have a few open bottles of heavily peated whiskies and a couple of sherried whiskies, I decided to next open a mildly peated whisky. Accordingly, bottle 2, which was opened last week is a Talisker 10. Not a recent one though. This is the so-called “map label” which was released in the 1990s as far as I know. Perhaps there’s a bottle code somewhere on the bottle that would narrow the specific year down but I’m not terribly enthused about looking for it. If anyone knows when the map label was launched and discontinued, please chime in below in the comments. What I can tell you is that I have been enjoying this bottle very much and am already beginning to feel melancholy about its inevitable demise in a few weeks. Here now, from the top quarter of the bottle, are my notes. Continue reading
Woo Lae Oak (Seoul, February 2024)
Somehow we only ate one barbecue meal in Seoul. But it was a good one. Woo Lae Oak has been around since 1946 and is one of the most celebrated restaurants in the city. It’s not the cheapest barbecue place—they use only Korean beef—but it’s also far from the most expensive. What they’re perhaps most famous for isn’t even grilled beef. The origins of the family that owns the restaurant are in North Korea and they are especially known for their Pyongyang-style naengmyeon and some people go there exclusively to eat their naengmyeon. We were there principally for the meat. Of course, it’s a mistake to end any Korean barbecue meal without chilled naengmyeon and so we ate across both sides of their menu, so to speak. Here’s a quick look at the meal. Continue reading
Matamaal II (Delhi, March 2024)
One of our favourite meals out during our trip to Delhi in January, 2023 was at Matamaal, the Kashmiri restaurant that opened a few years ago at the City Court mall in Gurgaon. Actually, that’s wrong: two of our favourite meals out on that trip were eaten at Matamaal. We liked the first meal so much that we went back again. In my review of both I noted that we’d be back for sure on our next trip and that this time we’d bring our boys with us. And so it came to pass last month. On our last day in Delhi we went to Matamaal for lunch. And it was another fine meal, and a highlight of our eating out on this trip as well. Here are the details. Continue reading
Thai Cafe, April 2024 (St. Paul, MN)
In reviewing our recent meal at Grand Szechuan a couple of weeks ago I noted that we hadn’t eaten much Chinese food during our three months away in Bombay and Seoul. Well, we didn’t eat any Thai food at all. As such, going out for a good Thai meal was high on our list of priorities when we got back. We got around to scratching that itch last weekend. Against all odds, we didn’t go to any of our usual top three: Krungthep Thai, On’s Kitchen or Bangkok Thai Deli. Instead we went back to the small restaurant that I once put almost on the same level as its bigger University Avenue (where else?) peers: Thai Cafe. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Littlemill 23, 1990 (Archives)
This week’s review is of a Littlemill. As I’ve noted before, Littlemill didn’t have the best reputation when it was a going concern. Indeed, when I first started getting interested in malt whisky as something other than an occasional indulgence, the official 12 yo—pretty much all that was easily available then—was one you learned to stay away from (though I didn’t think it was that bad when I finally tried it). As with so many other distilleries though, the distillery’s reputation improved after it closed, when older single casks began to become available from independent bottlers. In the early-mid 2010s, in particular, a number of 20+ yo casks filled in the late 1980s to the early 1990s showed up on the market that put the distillate in a very different, very fruity light. A number of these casks were bottled by Whiskybase under their Archives label. This bourbon cask 23 yo, distilled in 1990 was one of the first (though not, I think, the very first—there was one in the inaugural Archives release as well). As with so many bottles I purchased in those years, I’ve had it sitting on my shelves for a long time now. I’m glad to finally open it and am looking forward to drinking it down over the next few weeks. Continue reading
Eating at Noryangjin Fish Market (Seoul, February/March 2024)
Last weekend I posted a look at my visits to Seoul’s famous Noryangjin Fish Market, complete with an excessive slideshow of images. Noryangjin is a massive fish market, yes, but it is not just a fish market. The market also contains a large number of seafood restaurants on the second floor where you can have things you bought at the market cooked up to your specifications or where you can order off a menu as at a regular restaurant. I ate at the market on both visits, accompanied on each occasion by groups of my students. Here now is a report on those two meals, one a weekend lunch in February and the other a weekend dinner in March. As you’ll see, the experiences were not identical. And you’ll be glad to know that together they add up to another excessive slideshow of images. You’re welcome. Continue reading
Cafe Lota VII (Delhi, March 2024)
Cafe Lota is the one restaurant in Delhi that we/I may have eaten at on every trip to Delhi in the last 10 years. It’s certainly the restaurant we’ve eaten at the most. This is partly because it’s convenient to many of the places we visit in central-ish Delhi and for meeting up with friends who live in parts north and east; but it’s largely because we remain big fans of their menu of pan-regional Indian food, presented in contemporary’ish forms but without ever losing sight of their traditional anchors. We loved our first meals there in January 2014, not too long after they first opened, and we’ve continued to enjoy every meal we’ve had there since, even as the original chef departed and the restaurant’s own layout and menu kept evolving. Inevitable changes aside, many through lines remain from its beginnings; and so it’s no surprise that we enjoyed this meal very much as well. Here’s a quick report. Continue reading
Mingles (Seoul, February 2024)
The vast majority of our meals out in Seoul—and all the meals I’ve so far reported on—were eaten at more or less casual restaurants and at markets. We did, however, also eat three fancier meals; at places with Michelin stars, no less. Our interest was to see what contemporary high-end Korean cooking looks like, especially in the home country, where diners are intimately familiar with the cuisine in its traditional guises. The first of these three meals was eaten at Mingles, located in Gangnam-gu and currently the holder of two Michelin stars. We ate lunch there on a weekday in late February. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Grand Szechuan, March 2024 (Bloomington, MN)
We got back to Minnesota on Wednesday, March 27. On Sunday, March 31 we ate our first meal out. Of course, it was at Grand Szechuan, our family’s favourite restaurant in Minnesota. It’s always one of our favourite ways to welcome ourselves back to Minnesota after extended travel. And given that we hadn’t eaten any Sichuan food in three months—and no Chinese food beyond one Korean Chinese lunch in Seoul and one Indian Chinese dinner in Delhi—it was a particularly great way to welcome ourselves home after a long time away. We were joined by two friends who often eat with us there. Here’s how the meal went. Continue reading
Indri, Trini — The Three Wood
Hey look, it’s a whisky review. As I said on April 1, I’m going to be posting far fewer whisky (and other booze) reviews going forward. The goal is to focus on drinking down my own collection of bottles and not on reviewing as many whiskies as I can. These two goals are not compatible, in case you’re wondering. Anyway, my review today is not of a whisky that was in my collection but of one I drank quite a bit of in my recent travels. I first purchased a bottle of this Indri after arrival in Bombay. I liked it so much as I drank it down over those five weeks that I purchased another bottle from duty free that I drank down over five weeks in Seoul. And then I purchased a third bottle that I drank part of in Delhi and left behind in my father’s bar. Yes, I thought it was a very good whisky, especially for the price. I was shocked, however, to learn in Delhi of the company’s controversial ownership. Frankly, it’s put me off the whisky more than a little. You may be wondering what I’m on about. Here’s the story. Continue reading
My Annoying Opinions 