Palboche at Mandarin – NJ

It’s been a busy week. I’ve been working freelance full-time for the past month, and on top of the craziness of trying to figure out a new job, Romeo had to have cataract surgery this week. Luckily, he’s now with his private nurse, my mom, who herself had double cataract surgery recently too. Meanwhile, the BF is in Switzerland again interviewing for a job. If you haven’t noticed, it’s a strange and precarious time in my life, and because of all these things, I’ve been thinking about this blog a lot. It’s a lot of work maintaining Bionic Bites, however small it is. So until life settles back into a more predictable groove, I’ll be trying something new: more frequent and shorter posts. This is a blog after all, why not be more “bloggy?”

So this weekend, I was in Jersey making sure Romeo was getting enough snuggles (he was), and also making sure my mom wasn’t overwhelmed (she isn’t at least yet), and amid it all, a lot of eating was done. Food helps in times of stress. On Saturday we ate among many things, takoyaki at Mitsuwa’s Summer Festival, and today we had jajangmyun ($6.95) and palboche (팔보채, $18.95; pictured at top), seafood and vegetables in a thickened spicy sauce, at Mandarin. Have you ever had palboche? Strangely enough, it was a first for me, and I yelled at my mom for keeping it from me for so many years. Not that it was mind-blowing (egads, no sea cucumber!), but it was a nice change of pace from the usual platters of fried foods at Korean-Chinese restaurants. I scooped a few spoonfuls on top of my jajangmyun and I was golden. Try it yourself. For me, it’s all about experimentation right now.

Mandarin
110 Broad Avenue, 2nd Floor (b/n W Harwood & W Edsall Ave; map)
Palisades Park, NJ 07650
201-313-0121