Last night we had a great come back with the Samsung Smurfs, 11-1 in a perfect weather, with Kang Jeongho going homerun-crazy twice in a row, and Rotino being awesome as usual. I got to see Son Seung Lak, our closer pitcher, we hadn't had him in a while, because he does not come out in losing games, or unless it's very tight. The HisaYong (my cheering crew) had a special gift for us too, they gave us signed balls, and I got Sun Seung Lak :))) such a luck!
Anyways, I don't know why I start with the end of the day: I did other things than just going to the game. I met up with DM for a late breakfast in a Pancake Restaurant I had found a few weeks ago and wanted to try again. Last time I had gotten pancakes, because you know, Pancake place, you want to try the pancakes. But I had seen that they had Benedicts on their menu and wanted to try them.
The weather was super nice so I put on a summer dress with a summer sweater. I wanted to try the straw hat look, but I was afraid I'd look too summery and didn't want it to look weird. Oh what pride prevents you of doing. Anyways. I did take pictures, even if I did not actually go out like this (see pic below for actual hairstyle).
PANCAKES ORIGINAL STORY:
Very tiny restaurant in the corner of nowhere. It's a store situated in Mokdong's Paragon building, in the small areas between buildings where they put rooftops, probably to protect people from the crazy summer sun rays, right in front of the big SBS building. They have a pretty varied menu with brunch sets and open pretty early for a Korean restaurant (usually nothing is open before 10-11am in Korea, which was part of my cultural shock when I got here, and expected the Japanese let's get up at 6am culture).
They seem to be the second store to open in Seoul (the other one being in Hannam-Dong). The waitress I have had both times I've been was not really good. She's a bit slow on seeing who needs to be served, even though the store is tiny as a shoebox. She does not seem to be all there. You want to order a coffee while waiting for someone and she'll go get her pad to write it down - either she got a trauma forgetting an important order in the past, is just extremely insecure, or just has the memory of a goldfish. Regardless, if either of those is true, it makes no sense that she would not carry the pad with her (took a long time after I sat down before she came to see me, and when she did I asked to get a cappuccino as I waited, and she went to get her pad to get my order). Maybe she's just a little all over the place as a rule. Anyways, she seemed to have a bright sweet personality so I hold no grudge. Who goes to a pancake restaurant on a Saturday in a hurry, expecting the best treatment given in seconds anyways.
Thing is, in Korea there is a lot of things that are amazing, especially for food. The food is usually served within minutes, fresh and yummy, they have all kinds of Korean foods, and if you go in any beer/food restaurants on the street, people eat fast and leave fast so the service is quick and sharp. Koreans are the masters of bar hopping, as if they can't really sit and enjoy only one good place, and need to try another one.
When you go to a slow pace restaurant though, waiters SUCK. Like, really. Having waited on people for 6 months in a bar, and 2 years in a high class restaurant, I am in a position I can criticize service, because I know I can do better. Do not mistake me here, I am not bragging, just speaking service/common/sense here. In such a small place, it's a waiter's paradise, everything is close and easy to manage, it's easy to take a quick look to get an overview of your clients and see if anyone is in need of anything. Yet, she was completely clueless anytime I tried to get her attention. I blame the Korean habit of yelling very loud when you want to order in bars. People don't think it's rude to yell to get service in a restaurant so even slow-paced waiters don't feel like it's their job to serve people, they feel like they just need to wait to be called on.
They had a funny section in their menus. English is funny, but not that much. We might just get it a weird way to talk about smaller portions. But the Korean translation is much more explicit: For those poor things that could not get married. And the Benedict eggs are in that menu. I felt like I should never eat that when I go alone, question of pride.
The first time I went I got the cinnamon apple banana pancake. It was a bliss. Served in literally 3 minutes, the apple and banana pieces were warm and covered in sweet cinnamon and there was a little piece of butter on top, to melt over the pancackes. It was sweet enough on it's own, but I got a hot chocolate with the set, as I had already gotten a coffee that day. The hot chocolate was really good, prepared old style with whipped cream, that I just put on my pancake to eat with the fruits. Everything melted in my mouth.
They also had Canadian maple sirup, which I felt was kind of cool, taken that I hadn't had it in a year. It was not, however, my favourite maple syrup flavour, a bit too sweet.
I've always been pretty picky with maple syrup, because my mother always got us maple syrup from a specific place in Quebec, where her family always got theirs from, and it was this quality taste that you don't get everywhere. But eh? We can't always be picky? It was good syrup still.
Yesterday I got the Benedict, with my "morning" brunch coffee. Was great. It was not too big (even if I did leave some, I can't eat crazy quantity of food lately) for a person - so here with the "single" menu - and it had lots of sautéed vegetables in it which made up for the usual lack of veggies in Korean brunches (that tend to be the typical let's-just-put-lotta-bread-and-meat English style brunches) and was yummy enough.
If you are looking for the typical sort of salty butter Benedict sauce then it's not the right place for you to go to. The sauce is good but pretty "tasteless" so the taste of the veggies feel stronger than the Benedict taste.
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