Gontran Cherrier - great pastries!
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Great preparation! Can you bring this on the plane?!
Thanks so much for bringing us along on your trip. Iâve really enjoyed your posts.
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Great Prep? 
My dw is the one who worries about starving on any flight (journey) over 3 hours . In addition to what she âshowedâ me at the hotel pre-departure. In flight, she retreived a great Potato Sandwich, another Ham/Egg/Everything Sandwich, and various chips and snacks from her mysterious Black Travel Carry On Bag.
We never worry about bringing on solid food upon boarding. Passing through customs at destination is a different story and may present a hiccup.
We sometimes forget about âleftoversâ when we deplane at destination, but have not been strip searched in recent memory. Many, many moons ago, some overzealous customs dude in HKG flagged me for a packet (sashet) of salad dressing.
Oh, the horror!!! Ranch dressing has egg or pseudo egg as an ingredient!!!
@digga thanks for your note of enjoyment. Its fun sharing with like-minded folks.
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Per @klyeoh Peterâs suggestion, Iâll start a new thread when addressing some especially interesting place. We had a fun time at the Tongin Market in Seoul.
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Thanks! Tongin Market looked amazing.
Great report! Weâre still deciding between Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand for the return leg of this yearâs summer China trip.
(Due to family health issues, we werenât sure until yesterday if we were going.)
Iâll share this with the others tomorrow. Our 8 year old loves octopus and will be delighted. She had her heart set on a night market in Taipei but maybe this will persuade her otherwise.
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I was hoping youâd be going to China again this summer. Itâd be very difficult for me to choose between Taiwan and Korea. Both are fantastic to eat and to experience. Both are quite different as well.
Seoul night markets have (grilled) octopus on skewers. You can eat any part of the animals in Taipei/Taiwan. Canât go wrong wherever you end up going. (I think itâs more important that the kiddo is happy)
My mouth is watering thinking about Korea and Taiwan.
Seoul. Octopus skewers, snails in the bowl with sauce. After I paid they put the snails in the bowl and also gave me a bowl of broth alongside. It was -9C so it was rather nice to have hot broth for sipping.
Thatâs my snails
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Did the ginseng chicken you ate in this place made you change your mind towards this dish? I really hate ginseng or medical root in Chinese cooking, I disliked this even in high end place when well made. Normally I think Iâm going to skip this, but I know at times a well made dish can make you change your mind. Are you conquered by this dish? Thx.
I grew up disliking, even hating, Chinese medicinal herbs/roots. Especially Ginseng!!
Since my parents and grandparents are no longer around to cook and force me to consume, the medicinal soups have somehow morphed into comfort food. A few years ago, I started stocking up on these ingredients from Chinatown and regularly make soup with them. Even have cooked ginseng soup twice.
Iâd had Ginseng Chicken Soup in Korea about 20 years ago. I recall being surprised that the dish was actually palatable and not hating it. Fast forward 20 years. I was glad and happy to try Ginseng chicken soup again, itâs such an iconic Korean dish. I wanted my nieces and in-laws to experience it.
We had a fun meal. Everyone started with a complimentary small tea cup of Ginseng Liquor, tasted a little alcoholic. The soup and chicken was not obnoxiously bitter, actually barely any discernible nasty Ginseng bite. Pretty much as I recall from my only other try.
If you hadnât had before, I think you might consider it. @digga had also been to the same restaurant and had put a name to place.
My friend gave me some ginseng tea a few years ago, they are still in the cupboard, Iâve tried once or twice. Didnât like it.
I had some dong quai chicken (Traditional Herbs Soy Sauce Chicken 怩 äž é€ ç é/ ç¶ æž é» èȘ 黚 ć ć· èâŠ è± æČč é. With dong guai, etc.) at Tasting Court. With the â25 year hua diaoâ with Steamed Fresh Flowery Crab with Aged Shaoxing Wine & Red Yeast Rice Noodle. Everybody love this restaurant, but I can only give a B- because those 2 dishes ruin otherwise a delicious meal. I think I dislike a certain type of bitterness. Asian medical herbal soup isnât my cup of tea at all.
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Which restaurant was that?
We came across one today. But husband was a bit sick, we wait for a later meal, I searched online, there seem to have a fake ginseng chicken soup restaurant.
When I was in front of the restaurant,I causally checked the Michelin site, it was another address.
Photos from TripAdvisor
Donât know about you, but I found navigating Korea a bit more challenging than most other Asian countries. Many signs are only written in Korean, some in Chinese, rarely any in English. Google maps will show you the place on the map, but no walking directions. That said, we did manage to go to all the places we planned with minimal fuss.
The Ginseng Chicken Place:
Toksochon
Address:
85-1 Chebu-dong, Jongro-gu, Seoul, South Korea
02-737-7444
Direction:
Subway : Take the subway line 3 and get off @ Gyeongbokgung station and exit through
exit number 2, then
120 meters towards Hyoja-dong direction. You will past âpopoyesâ, then look for GS25
convenience store,
turn into the small lane at the corner of this store, you will see Toksochon.
Bus : Take the bus 7022, 1022, 0212, or 1711 then get off at Jeokseon-dong
or Gyeongbokgong station.
Hereâs a blog entry regarding this place:
Hereâs their biz card I collected. Canât read a word of Korean, matched the phone number to the one above.
chick 2.pdf (132.1 KB)
chick 3.pdf (109.0 KB)
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Thanks, it was the same a HK friend mentioned.
I bookmarked a few restaurants from the Michelin website, if I just copied the name, sometimes it is in a completely different place, sometimes the same restaurant in google has a slightly different address.
