Bennigan's Beefsteak

Today one of my lab mates brought a Bennigan's Beefsteak - an instant hamburger steak in tomato sauce, to be heated in a water bath or microwave. While heating you are rewarded with a mouth watering smell of tomato and spices. The more disappointing is the opening of the bag: a yellowish brownish blob of meat which, i dare to say, likely never saw a frypan up close. The tomato sauce was OK - better then ketchup, but nothing special. The first two things noticed when testing the meat was the lack of any crispiness or frying aroma and even worse, a consistency of a tofu sausage.

If somebody would have told me the i'm eating Tofu at that time, i would have believed it. The total absence of meat aroma made me check the package if there was indeed beef inside. And guess what... there is beef inside!!! stunning 50%. Now my korean isn't good enough to decipher the other ingredients but my guess is that the majority is either pork meat, tofu or bread.
The last nail in the coffin is a price of about 3000 korean won.

Verdict: Not even worth trying.

Chinese Cabbage Root

On a small traditional market near the seoul national university subwaystation we found something what looked like a sugar beet. The old lady called this the 'tail of the chinese cabbage'. This flowery description left me wondering if this might be indeed the tail (root) of a chinese cabbage. After asking my wife's mother we found that its indeed the root and that its neither a common nor a very rare vegetable.

The taste was surprisingly pleasant. A bit sweet, a bit nutty, not unlike kohlrabi but in consistency less 'glass like' and with overall better taste. Also in the ones we tried we didnt find any fibers as you might encounter them in kohlrabi.

Unfortunately they were too tasty so that there were none left to cook ^^
All in all highly recommended, if you can find them.

Raw, roughly 200g. peels like a kohlrabi.

Baja Chicken at Quiznos

After my recent experience with the tasty looking add in quiznos, praising the black angus sandwhich, which turned out to be a total disappointment, i was hesitant to try the new 'Baja Chicken Sandwich'.
However the food stylist made it look awesome so i thought i will risk again to get disappointed.

Actually i turned out to be quite OK. The sandwich is, frankly speaking, heavy as hell. Its loaded with beacon, chicken meat, cheese, BBQ sauce, Mayo and not a trace of this nasty green stuff called salad ^^.
The taste of the BBQ sauce goes well with the beacon but this in conjunction with the mayo overpowers the chicken as well as the cheese, which i believe is supposed to be cheddar.
The sandwich is worth trying once but thats also enough.

p.s. There are currently 2 quiznos restaurants on the gwanak campus: one in the 301 building at the top of the campus (02-871-9329), and one at the new dormitory near the back gate of the university, close to the sports field (02-881-9211). They close at 10pm in the engineering bld and at 9.30pm at the dorm.