Korean BBQ at Uncle Tong's Seoul

During our first week in Seoul, I had dinner by myself most nights, since Frits came back to the hotel quite late.

Last week he managed to get back to the hotel on time each night, so we were able to have dinner together. Nice!

But yesterday, friday evening, there was a dinner scheduled with the local team here in Korea and he asked me to come along. Sure, why not.

About an hour before we would take of to the restaurant, he sent me an email: "Dress extra warm.". I wrote back, joking: "Why? I hope we are not having dinner outdoors?". 

It was about freezing, you know. 

He replied:"Not sure, but it sounds almost like that." Say whaaaaaaat???? All of a sudden I was a whole lot less enthusiastic to come along!

One of the colleagues drove us to a place a bit uphill, about a 10 minute drive from the hotel. We saw some sort of plastic tents/sheds. Sort of outdoors but covered up.

The place is called Uncle Tong's and it is a Korean BBQ restaurant that serves pork.

Now in the Netherlands many people don't eat pork. Pork has a bad reputation. Due to the bio-industry pigs in our country have a lot of hormones and other unhealthy stuff in them. Pork in itself is not considered very healthy either, with all the fat in it.
So Frits and I rarely eat pork. 
But pork in Korea clearly is another matter and as they say:"When in Rome, do as the Romans". In other words, when in Korea, do as the Koreans;-). 
Ok, let's get back to our night at Uncle Tong's:

Plastic chairs stand around tables-with-grill, on top of (empty of course!) oil drums. The fires of the grills warm up the place, more or less.

It doesn't get more basic and authentic then this, I guess;-).

First round were fatty slices of pork, that we grilled above the fire. On the table were four different sauces that all were very tasty.

After that type of pork meat, pork ribs were served.

A guy brought the still sizzling rib and removed it from the stick.

He then lay that rib on the grill. 

After which he tore the rib into pieces with his bare hands. I mean: without any tools. He just ripped it apart with two hands. Of course he was wearing protective gloves. Otherwise he would have severely burned his hands, duh!

In order to be able to eat the ribs, we also had to put on gloves. On our left hand we first put a fabric glove and over that a plastic glove.

Frits first put it on his wrong hand, which  felt weird;-).

Frits, struggling with the pig;-)

It tasted very good. But I had already filled my stomach with the first round of pork. Also I still kept burning my hands, despite of the gloves.

Later there were even more rounds: marinated pork and noodle soup.

The drinks on the table were beer and rice wine. Now I don't drink beer, so I had some rice wine. Good stuff, but a bit strong. 
When I found out they also had coke, I shifted to that.

At this point, I was warm enough. Later I got cold again.

I guess this says Coke in korean?

Our group was around 15 collaegues ( of which only one was a woman, besides myself, of course).

There were small speeches from time to time …. in Korean.  

And there was a whole lot of talking and laughing. I learned a lot about Frits' colleagues and about Korea. Many remarkable, interesting things. I am saving them for another blogpost, but be sure that you will be amazed!

Towards the end Frits and I both got really cold and the smoke from the grill fires started getting in our eyes. Time to get back to the hotel.
But apart from that, we had a very entertaining evening with a group of nice, kind people. 

The evening was ended with some group shots before we went back to the hotel.

Thanks, team Korea, for a remarkable, unusual evening!