There are over 41,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S. There are 36,525 McDonald’s in the whole world! Despite that imbalance of General Tso to Ronald McDonald, I didn’t eat Chinese food until I was 17 and dining out with a friends’ family. The shock registering on their faces when I informed them that I’d never indulged in Szechuan cooking was akin to telling a Deadhead you thought Jerry Garcia was “that ice cream guy.” They went through the 5 stages of grief upon hearing the news: “No, never? How could you never have eaten it? Are you sure? That’s so sad. We’ll order you something nice.”

I liked it, and have always thought the same thing afterwards: saucy, too much rice, and the chicken pieces seem cobbled and held together with the thick fried skin. I grew to enjoy American Chinese food more and more, and found the cool guy joints like P.F. Changs to be very satisfying despite the cultural morass it created by offering Korean, Chinese, Singaporean and Cantonese style chicken.

So, in Korea, I was expecting to have a nice meal of authentic Chinese food due to the close historical ties of the two countries. I had eaten at one Chinese place that was awesome. This was a high backed chair, cloth napkin place, with lots of cool Chinese art on the walls with a golden dragon protecting the entrance. We ordered the the middle priced set menu which had a nice mix of everything.

First we started with the Chinese fire water and a saucy vegetable seafood dish.

This is a thin sliced pork salad with peppers.

These are giant fried shrimp in a sweet n sour sauce.

My least favorite dish was the mixed mushroom and scallops

Here is the classic sweet and sour pork (with a cherry on top).

Last, we had a big beautiful noodle soup with a squishy bread to dip.

Everything was well cooked and tasted fresh, and we had no rice!