Saturday, February 20, 2010

Samgyeopsal at Arirang Korean Restaurant

When I was a little girl, my mother never allowed me to eat the milky slippery fat of pork belly. She would carefully crave pieces of meat for me and my siblings and leave the fat and skin inside the pot. I never know what happened to those fats. My guess is that our maid would throw them away. This is the reason why I avoid pork fat like pest. I believed that pork fat was too greasy to eat and that they would make my chubby cheeks chubbier!

Until one day the truth was revealed to me in the form of samgyeopsal. Nobody ever told me, that meat with streaks of fat tasted way better than lean meat and that it doesn't taste greasy at all. I summoned all the courage to bite on my very first piece of samgyeopsal. I even took a small burned piece! As I chewed and chewed and chewed, the taste of pork that I knew so well came out and the fat intensified it even more! A burnt taste of grilled meat came right away, together with the spicy gochujang taste. Then I grew bolder, I took a bigger piece and mated it with some kimchi and folded them into a salad leaf. It tasted even better! I'm ruined!

Nowadays, I crave for Samgyeopsal and look out for it in every Korean restaurants that I know. However, korean BBQ is quite pricey (€ 20 - € 30) for a poor student like me, even if it's for once in a few months. Until I stumbled across this cheap Korean restaurant where they serve grilled pork belly with rice, five different banchans and salads for two persons for only € 14. Okay, the interior and exterior of the restaurant are shabby and they desperately need some good spring cleaning. But I can ignore such minorities in favour of those thinly sliced grilled pork.

berlin arirang samgyeopsal


On that day they serve kimchi, cucumber kimchi, bean sprout with garlic, caramelised potatoes and jalapenos with anchovies as banchans (side dishes)

grilled samgyeopsal Arirang Berlin

Samgyeopsal Arirang Berlin


wrap the pork with some rice and a slice of kimchi in a piece of lettuce, then shove them whole in your mouth!

No wonder my mom keeps complaining that I look chubbier everytime she saw me. We know now why. I guess, my mom was right, I should have avoided pork fats. Now it's too late, there is no turning back.

1 comment:

  1. I stumbled across your blog and tried out Arirang recently as I live in the same block. The veal soup i had there was tasty. My GF´s coming over and tomorrow we´ll have Samgyeopsal there. I just hope, it´s as delicious as it looks on your pics!

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