My friend brought me to Kangnam - the most expensive place in Seoul to try cold noodles (냉면). I had tried this kind of noodles a few times in Vietnam before but it wasn’t impressive. So I expected that it would be different if I eat in Seoul.
We went to a restaurant in center of Kangnam, I forget to take photo of the restaurant. Just remember that there were quite a lot people eating since it was in lunch time. Outside it was rainning a bit, but right after I got in the restaurant, it brought a cozy feelling with the way of decorating and yellow light. We ordered 2 kinds of noodle. One was a normal cold noodles, one was a spicy cold noodles without soup. Besides, we ordered grilled beef and mantou. Seem enough for lunch.
With someones who have never tried cold noodles before, they may feel a bit weird because of its soup. In order to make it cold, they put ground ice in the soup of noodle (the ice is also made from that soup. They freezed the soup). That is why it was called cold noodles. Really creative, right? It would be great if you eat cold noodles in summer. But it was not bad at all to eat in some rainny days like me.
I dont know but as my friends said, I should add a spoon of vinegar tothesoup to make it more savory. That is the right way of local to eat this dish. I followed my friend put vinegar and feel more delecious. My friends were so surprised because there were not a lot of foreigners who can eat that way. But it didn’t matter with me. It is quite similar with Vietnamese cuisine. They also put vinegar or lemon to some kinds of noodles such as Phở, Bún chả,... But in most of case, I prefer lemon to vinegar.
The noodles was coiled tightly in the middle of the big bowl. It didn’t look a lot but turned out super a lot. A half of egg on top. Look like an art of arrangement. The noodles was thin but tough, dip in the savory soup.
The grilled beef was really tasty. This was the first time I ate it but I felt a bit familiar as if I have eatten it somewhere. I kept wondering to figure out what was familiar. Eventually I realized that It was quite similar with a kind of grilled pork that was the most important ingredient of “Bun Cha”- the famous noodles of Vietnamese cuisine.
This was also the first time I ate mantou. As far as I know this dish comes from China. It was good looking with the thin white cover. But its taste was even better than its look. Dip in soy sauce to have better balance of flavors.
My friend had spicy noodles which was just only noodles without cold soup like me. It was mixed wit a bit sauce and some toppings such as cucumber, egg, kimchi, sesame seed,... My friend reallyloved that and it looked not bad, too.
Interesting thing about the way of eating
Thank to this meal, I realized the super ability of Korean that they can eat noodles with extremely high speed, they dont even need to bite before swallowing. lol. We started eating at the same time, but while I had just finished some bites, my friend already finished whole bowl of noodles.
With one chopstick of noodles, as I said that cold noodle was quite tough, so I needed to bite a lot and long to make it become small pieces to be able to swallow. But Korean doesn’t need that such long process. I saw the way of eating noodles and recognized that they just sucked up noodles constantly and swallow right away. Haha.
I was so surprised and kept staring at them. I dont know how come. lol. That way of eating maybe not good for the stomach but look really delicious. It makes whoever seeing them also desire to eat that noodles. Lol.
Some related posts you may want to read:
Korean special things: Bap Burger ?! What the heck is that?! LoL.
Korean typical meal - made by grandma
Gochujang Bulgogi - Taste sweet and hot at the same time.