By the time I got home, I was dizzy and tired and had a massive headache. It was cold outside, and the wind made me wish that I had thought of wearing my winter coat that day like Accuweather.com told me to.
So I ordered Thai off of a place nearby through seamless.com. I got crab rangoon (which were delicious because, come on, they're crab rangoons! But otherwise passable in terms of rangoon quality itself) and chicken pad thai (which was also slightly disappointing). About five minutes after I order Thai food, I realized what I really wanted was Korean food. This reminded me that M and I have been planning to go eat at Korea Town in Manhattan since we discovered M lives really close to Korea Town, but hadn't actually done it yet. This led to M and I making plans to go out to Korea Town on Tuesday for Bibimbap.
So we did.
Stepping into Korea Town is a weird experience. It is like turning a corner and finding yourself on a street that definitely belongs in Seoul and not downtown Manhattan. Even the Citibank on that block is marked in Korean characters. Neon is everywhere. There are some traditional Chinese characters advertising Chinese food being served alongside traditional Korean dishes. M and I stick out like a sore thumb amongst the small throngs of Koreans that mill about the street speaking in fast Korean. Some give us a few quizzical glances. We clearly are outsiders.
We cruised around Korea Town for a bit, looking for a good place. We joked about doing post-dinner karaoke but wisely decided against it. We avoided the seedy restaurants in second floors of buildings and decided on one named "Miss Korea BBQ". It has a nice modern design but still evokes a bit of that Asian quality. It looked clean. And the prices seemed reasonable. We duck in and order Bibimbap. M orders some wine which she doesn't like. We eat our fill of food served in a stone pot (I scrape away at the bottom of the pot to catch the pieces of rice that have stuck there and formed bizarrely crispy delicious little rice bits) and try a little of every appetizer put in front of us (I nearly choked on a spicy pickle). It was nice.
I mean, there's no bibimbap like the ones I ate regularly in Qingdao, or like the one I had in Nanguoluxiang in Beijing, but the one in Korea Town will do just fine.
Afterwards, we duck into a Korean cafe, order two Honeydew Melon Bubble Teas and walk over to Herald Square and sit in the cold sipping our neon-green drinks and desperately checking the score on the Rangers-Penguins game on M's phone. The Rangers won so M was happy. And I was too, if only because I'm a Rangers fan by association. I think M and S might disown me if I supported any other hockey team. I find myself wishing it were world cup season so that I could go nuts for the soccer teams. Last World Cup I was a passionate supporter of The Netherlands, because, c'mon, it's the Dutch. They're badass by definition. And they should have won. Whimpy Spaniards....they'd throw themselves on the ground whenever a Dutchman would come less than 5 ft close to them. I mean, they're a good team. But the Dutch are better.
And totally should have won.
THEY SHOULD HAVE WON, OKAY?
Next World Cup, I hope I'll be able to root for Ecuador again. But that's assuming the national soccer team gets its act together and plays strong through the prelims. But that's another year away still I think. So I'm just going to be happy being a Rangers fan by association. For now.
the thing is, some of the 2nd floor ones are probably way more delicious, its just a matter of figuring out which i think.
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