From: tsui@ils.nwu.edu
Subject: Re: best oriental restaurant
Organization: Institute for the Learning Sciences
Distribution: chi
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 14:55:19 GMT

Josh Tsui replies to:



>First of all, this is NOT meant to be a flame, so PLEASE don't take it that
>way.  It's just meant to be an honest assessment of the restaurant mentioned
>above.
>

no prob, I am a little surprised by your experience there and I'll go through
them one at a time below.

>SERVICE - Pretty bad.  The waitress hung around our table as soon as we sat
>down, trying (I assume) to get our order as soon as possible.  They weren't
>very friendly, and there was an error in the food order when it came out.
>We had to wait forever to get our check, I finally had to get up and ask
>for it.  No one refilled our water glasses.
>

Hmm, thats really strange, I've never had bad service there before.  Were they
really busy or something?   The only problem I ever encountered was that they
never know when to give you the check, but the place is so small that usually a
glance will tip them off.  I've never had a mistake with my orders though.


>FOOD - I ordered the Korean pancakes, and my girlfriend had the Bi-Bim-Bob,
>which is a combination of rice, noodles, meat, and fried egg.  I also thought
an
>order of BROILED MEAT soup would be good as an appetizer.  The soup came out,
>and we were a bit surprised to find that the "broiled meat" soup was beef
>tongue soup.  It was just beef tongue slices with broth and a ton of green
>onions in it.  There were also these things that looked like white gristle
>floating around in it.  Not that appetizing, to say the least.  The meat in
>the other dish was pure gristle.


Can't say I've ever ordered that soup, now I know.  Once again, never ran into
that problem before with gristle in the meat.  Compared to Bando, Korean
Restaurant (on Lawrence, close to California), and Sam Mee I think I've had the
best meat at Gin Go Gae.



  The Korean pancakes were ok, but not very
>exciting.  They were good and spicy, but there was no flavor to them.  No
>subtlety to the taste.  It was just an overpowering spiciness and they were
>a bit greasy.  Total bill for the evening: $30.00.
>

I've always thought that the pancakes had good complexity to them.  It should
be as tangy as they are hot and spicy.  Did you eat them with the vegetables
they came in or did you eat each piece individually?  This really affects it a
lot, you should eat the pancakes mixed with the vegetables and kim chee.  This
kind of baffles me because I've never had them greasy either.


>Am I missing something?  I thought the whole experience was VERY
disappointing.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience due to my recommendation, I've got to be
more careful about that.  But, I do have to say that I've never had the
problems you went through at this place.  I still stand behind the restaurant's
quality and I'm not alone on this, I've take a few people there before and they
feel the same way I do.  My family actually drives in from Kalamazoo, Michigan
to eat there and they know about all the other places also.  Sorry, Korean food
is one of my few big passions (next to my fiance and John Woo films) so this
hits a sensitive area.


>And I disagree completely with the opinion that Thai food is just a "passing
>fad."  I've had every kind of "oriental" food, and last night was only the
>second time I've had Korean (the first time I wasn't thrilled either).  I
>think Thai food is incredibly good, and the thing that makes it good is the
>complexity and subtlety of the many different tastes found in it.  MY
>personal recommendation for a favorite "oriental" restaurant is Rose Thai,
>2644 W. Lawrence.  I've had most of the stuff on their menu and can safely
>say that it's consistently good.  Prices are VERY reasonable too.
>

Maybe I shouldn't have said that, I didn't mean to offend anybody with that
statement.  its just that sometimes a certain type of food seems good because
its somewhat new to the general public.  Give it a decade and see where it
goes, I know Thais will still be eating it because its their food.  Its kind of
like how sushi became really huge in the 80's, its still popular but people are
not exactly flocking to eat the stuff.  Sometimes when I eat Thai food it seems
like really bad Chinese food (just my opinion, please don't nail me for this). 

>I don't know... maybe it's just a question of individual tastes... perhaps
>people who have gone to both places could compare... or would this be like
>comparing apples and oranges?
>

It would be like apples and oranges.  There's no way I can compare Korean to
Chinese, its like comparing French to Mexican.  Anybody out there good with
comparing the different Korean restaurants?
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