Back to the Motherland & Visiting Neighbors – East Asia

My Mom’s World Famous Galbi

After twelve years since my last visit, I’m going back to the motherland: Seoul, South Korea. Or as I like to say, ‘Where the magic happened!’ I’ll also be traveling to Hong Kong and Beijing. After much drama at the Chinese embassy on Friday, immediately followed by a bizarre case of food poisoning from a harmless looking gyro, I didn’t think it would happen, but thankfully, I just touched down in Hong Kong.

Originally, I wrote this as I was hovering over Greenland, squished in sardine class, smelling the not so wondering odors emanating from my fellow passengers. The smells rotated at intervals between noxious fart fumes and bursts of girly peach perfume. It was quite amusing five hours into my fifteen hour and forty minute flight, but not so much six hours in. Oddly enough, I didn’t emerge from the plane pissed as a crazed motherf*cker.

But this is a food blog, and you aren’t visiting to read about farts, so let’s talk food. So far, here is a list of all the foods I want to eat on my short tour of Asia. Gamjatang (감자탕, potato pork bone stew), galbi (갈비, barbecue ribs), samgyupsal (삼겹살, pork belly), hwe (회, raw fish), san nakji (산낙지, live octopus), grilled gopchang (곱창구이, grilled intestines), and white peaches in Korea; dim sum, stinky tofu from the night market, roast goose, and xiao long bao (Shanghai soup dumplings) in Hong Kong; and lastly, Peking duck in Beijing. I know I have a lot of Asian readers, so please let me know if I’m missing anything or if you have any restaurant recommendations. Thank you in advance!

I’ll be gone two weeks, but since I’m behind posting, I’ll still be writing about NYC food in the next few posts. So for more breaking news about my trip, please visit me on Twitter and Facebook. I’ll be on vacation, but unfortunately for my boyfriend, the food porn never stops.