Why is everything red?

I was most impressed when I arrived in Sydney to see a thriving Koreantown right by Chinatown - although we are blessed with some excellent Korean food in London (particularly the fabulous Nara in Soho), it is nowhere near as prevalent as it is here. I have been indulging on way too many packets of those ridiculously addictive Shin Ranyun spicy ramen noodles (wow, I have just found an equally ridiculous wiki article about them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_ramyun, which explains why they disappeared in the UK due to "irradiated ingredients" - hmmm).

Obviously I had to take advantage of this situation and eat some Korean food whilst I am here, so I dragged Jess, Albert, Frank, Damo and Damo's lovely missus Sarah to Seoul Ria on George St. You walk in and you know it will be good. The entire room was full of Koreans chomping away, the decor utilitarian, supplemented by big plasmas showing Korean telly. There was a party of what appeared to be 5 generations of one family in the middle.

The others gave Albert and me the responsibility of ordering, and we had (excuse the made-up spellings, and sorry for lack of pictures, too busy eating!):

• Japchae - stir fried glass noodles with seafood, very heavy on the sesame oil, absolutely delish, with thicker than I've seen before noodles
• Dolsot bibimbap - rice with veg and beef and raw egg served on a hot stone with chilli sauce, I didn't get enough!
• Rice cake - not something I've eaten that often, very stodgy, not dissimilar to the Chinese version, but obviously with a red sauce this time!
• Steamed beef rib - sounds very uninspiring, but the beef so tender it was just falling off the bone. I remember when I worked OT in Hong Kong and we used to fight over this dish
• Tofu soup - oh I could've eaten it all by myself, with a bowl of rice, my idea of comfort food
• Seafood pancake (par-jeon) - the only real disappointment - the batter very thick and not crisp enough

The banchan (side dishes) were also pretty interesting. As well as the usual kimchi and weird yam cakes, we also had pasta salad! We didn't eat much of that! Here is the kimchi - verdict was that it had the right level of spice, but wasn't sour enough.

We also sampled some of the interesting alcoholic options available - given that there were so many of us, we tried a bit of everything! The following pic makes me look like an alkie:


Left to right: Hahn beer (Australian unfortunately), carbonated rice wine (looks disgusting, but very very quaffable), and "hundred year" wine (tasted of ginseng, acquired taste!)