Kyung Bok Goong

My mom's boss insisted that he take me out for dinner and show me around the city while I was visiting Vancouver. Simon and I met up with him at the Hotel Vancouver at 1 in the afternoon and went for lunch at Aki Sushi. He brought along his whole Korean family and I've never spoken to or met any of them before, so it was a little awkward at first. He offered to order for us and did so, in Japanese, and soon after plates and bowls of a bunch of things arrived at our table. I made futile attempts at shovelling food into my mouth with chopsticks. We drank Sapporo beer and ate and ate and ate until I could muster no more food. My favorite was definitely the mackerel, which was possibly deep fried, but I like to picture Iron Chef Morimoto back in the kitchen carefully ladeling hot oil over top of the skin to crisp it up and leave the meat tender and fresh.

We drove out to North Vancouver to see his beautiful multi-million dollar house. We relaxed on his patio drinking a bottle of red wine that he picked out. Simon spilled a glass of wine and was quite apologetic, only for Joseph, my mom's boss, to spill his glass as well, all over himself, which was quite amusing. We chatted for a bit, snacking on delicious cherries and nuts, and may or may not have tapped into a bottle of 18 year old Scotch. I am guessing so because further details start to blur in my memory.

We made a trip out to Grouse Mountain, which I previously was not even aware existed, at least not so close to Vancouver. Apparently people actually climb up the mountain, called "the grind", but we took the easy way. The tram ride up gives an amazing view of Vancouver - you can see the entire city on a clear day. We watched a lumberjack show and a sleeping bear, then had a cocktail 2,800 above the city. Manhattans just taste better in the mountains, it seems. We descended and briefly visited the Kitsilano dam before returning to Joseph's home.

We snacked on several types of dried seafood; squid, cuttlefish and octopus, with a spicy red chili paste. There were also more nuts, including pine nuts, which I'd never seen anyone simply snack on before. Perhaps this is just because I cannot afford to eat more than a garnishing portion of pine nuts. I thought that all of the food was absolutely delicious, until we got on the topic of tofu. Joseph asked his wife to make us some dish with a cube of tofu, soy sauce and some sort of dried fish flakes on top that reminded me of goldfish food. I had one bite and politely passed it over. Then, we most definitely finished off the remnants of 40 ounces of our scotch and listened to Joseph's daughter play the piano.

For dinner we went to a Korean barbecue restaurant. I swear that it was called Ayi's something or other and remember trying to repeat "ahhh-yeee" over and over in my head to retain it, but by process of elimination Simon has established that it's actually called Kyung Bok Goong. Not even close. Again Joseph ordered for us, which was probably good because my Korean isn't so good after being intoxicated. As soon as the meat hit the grill in the center of the table my appetite was rapidly rekindled, even after the big lunch and all of the afternoon snacking.

Now, I have no idea what we ate. I furiously took pictures, but they're basically all drunkenly awful. Some of it was good, some of it was not. Some of it I probably wouldn't have eaten while sober. A large portion of it was deliciously spicy, which was sort of dangerous because he ordered us a bottle of this Korean whiskey that literally tasted like water being drank after all the spicy food. I remember asking if the octopus in chili sauce is supposed to be so chewy and not wanting to eat any more of it. Joseph was impressed that I was polishing off so much of it anyway and said that Korean people would be very impressed if I ordered this in a restaurant. Everything other than the octopus was delicious.

There was some sort of cooked lettuce salad with chili sauce, some other sort of vegetables in chili sauce, some noodles and rice in chili sauce; basically, a bunch of food with hot chili sauce. We ate the cooked beef with chili sauce as well, which was definitely the best part of the whole ordeal. There was some sort of thing that he called "Korean pizza" that tasted more like undercooked dumpling and shredded vegetables. The last dishes we had were a cold soup that I thought would be awesomely disgusting but actually completely cleansed my palette and took away any burning sensation. Then we had a big bowl of what I think he called the national dish of Korea, which I thought was incredibly plain. Perhaps I missed the part where we added any sort of seasoning whatsoever, since I think it was just noodles, vegetables and beef with an egg yolk and some seaweed.

I felt remarkably lucid as we were dropped off at the sea bus terminal to head back downtown. A girl on the sea bus asked if she could use my cell phone, then gave me a mango juice for my trouble. We watched part of the fireworks competition from the Burrard Bridge and I happily enjoyed my mango juice before we hopped on a couple of buses and I passed out.