The Girl Who Ate Everything

This entry mostly took place on May 18. ...Yup.

Hey, it's..kimchi.

The week after I got back from that trip I took to Seoul, you know, way back when (i.e., May), all I wanted was Korean food. You think I would've been sick of it. But. No. I may have been tired of kimchi by the time I left Seoul, but when I got back to New York City I longed for patbingsu and sujebi and rice cakes and fun little dishes of pickled fermented things. Which is how I ended up going to Koreatown three times in one week.

First stop was Arirang, a new-ish (an age that can be counted in months) restaurant that specializes in sujebi (torn noodles) and kalguksu (knife-cut noodles). While boohoo-ing to Emily about how awesome Seoul was and how much it sucked to not be there anymore, she suggested we try Arirang. My heart let out a little squeal of excitement (imagine the sound of air being slowly let out of a balloon; it's a bit more pathetic than that); THE KOREAN MAGIC BEGAT BY NOODLES COULD CONTINUE.

I've actually been to Arirang twice since mid-May, which is rare for a place that isn't within walking distance of my office. You should go there too. Here's how to do it.

Do not go to the EYELASH EXTENSION floor.

First, find it. It's on the third floor of 32 West 32nd Street and easy to miss unless you know to look for this door. Or maybe you're already familiar with this door because you extend your eyelashes. I won't judge. (...Maybe I will.)

There were a few weeks of my life between the end of May and the beginning of June when I kept eating Korea food and I JUST DON'T KNOW WHY, IT WOULD NOT STOP. Let's see how quickly i can sum it up. I cannot promise coherence.

I want to start by saying I know I don't update this blog frequently enough. No one is telling me this aside from the gnat that lives in the back of my brain and goes, "ROBYN, YOU DO NOT UPDATE ENOUGH," in whatever voice a gnat has. It makes me feel poopy, yet I'm not doing much to change my habits. Right now I'm perfectly aware that the time I'm spending writing about how I don't write enough I could apply to ...writing something useful. But instead I'll just divulge where some of the time has gone over the past week: spending an undocumented ("really long" if I had to estimate) amount of time reading Children of the 90s and feeling nostalgic and old; attending Nathan's International Hot Dog Eating Contest; in one afternoon, eating at two dessert shops followed by dinner; being perpetually depressed by American health care; being sporadically depressed by reminders of loneliness, but at the same time wanting to live alone (at one point even looking up one-bedroom apartment prices in Philly and feeling frustrated by how cheap it is); at some point, sleeping in my bed; sleeping on the subway (I'm quite skilled at this, not that it's anything to brag about); watching Moon (I was about to say something that would've given away the plot); watching the four-hour long Love Exposure and thinking love is funneh, Japanese movies are awesome, and Nishijima Takahiro is frighteningly adorable; working from 10 a.m to 7 p.m. on weekdays; biking around Brooklyn for one and a half hours; getting a haircut (and as you can see in that photo, eating carrot cake in Brighton Beach); eating...other stuff; procrastinating; emailing; showering.

[breathes out] That's some of it. Selected bits. Not that you have to know all that.

Another reason I don't blog as frequently as I should is because I insist on stuffing too much content into one post. This post could be four posts on another blog, but I'd rather get it all out in one massive, bloated go.

So on to the real stuff: FOOD.

Pocha 32

Pocha

Pocha 32, which I assume is a shortened version of Korean street food tents called pojangmacha, is known as "that divey bar/restaurant in K-Town where you can get huge pots of street food and watermelon soju." See those bottles on the sides of the awning? You're in for a drunken treat!

Fishing nets = increase desire for alcohol?

Okay, it's not that divey. It's mostly decorated with green fishing nets, bottle caps, and happy photographs of their gazillion customers. If you have an aversion to any of these things (photos of smiling strangers, all staring at you), you should go somewhere else.

This entry originally took place on May 23. Part two is a-comin'!

I want this sign.

After a few years of mild apathy and the nudging of a foreign visitor, I finally made it to Burger Joint, the "not very secret semi-secret dive-y burger joint tucked behind a curtain in the lobby of Le Parker Meridian."

My earliest memory of Burger Joint is hearing about it from one of my classmates, Joe Campanale, during a discussion in our food communications class in spring of 2005. Face aglow with the memories of burger perfection, he enthusiastically referred to it as "beef heaven." And then gave more words of praise that I can't remember because this happened four years ago and I can only recollect conversations that happened in the past 30 minutes. Although I was intrigued by his outpouring of Burger Joint love, for some reason I never cared enough to actually go there.

...Until England-based Edd of He-Eats contacted me to say he was visiting New York City in May and we should grab a burger at Burger Joint. This was the poke I needed to get my burger blogging butt to Midtown and cross another famous New York City burger off my "to eat" list.

Methinks that tweet sign wasn't there four years ago.

Luckily, we didn't wait in a horrendously long line that Saturday morning. It was out the door, but not far past its outer curtains. From what I've heard, it's pretty much always crowded.

This entry originally took place on May 23. Here's Part 1!

Ain't nothing like a sunny day at the beach, hanging out with friends...

They only look dead.

Lying on the sand...

Drag.

Dragging bodies wrapped in black sheets across the sand...

Erm.

Lying on the beach in an atypical fashion.

We weren't at the beach for a fun day of being pelted by UV rays, but for a fun day of helping Diana with her personal photoshoot. Roman and Davi acted as "bodies on the beach" and Kathy acted as "mysterious woman dragging bodies on the beach" while Greg, Edd, and I took the roles of assistants and documentarians.

Shake Shack-ing originally took place on June 6.

SHACK BURGER!

When people ask me something about Shake Shack, their first question is usually, "Is it worth the wait?" You mean that ridiculous 45 to 90 minute wait? Oh, god, of course not. New Yorkers are just insane. Also, we don't have In-N-Out.

But I have to take that back (or add myself to the "insane" pile) because, for the first time, I subjected myself to an hour+ wait (90 minutes, perhaps)—admittedly, while passing the time talking to my friends on a nice, sunny day, but still a long enough time that I can see why non-Shake Shack lovers think those of us who are willing to queue for that long probably had lobotomies. And now that I have that experience under my belt, I would probably do it again. Because, as proven visit after visit, Shake Shack still makes my favorite burgers in New York City. There isn't even really a second option; for me, there's Shake Shack, and then there's everything else that fails to fill that void in my heart that says, "VACANCY FOR DELICIOUS BURGER ONLY."

I'm so behind on blogging that I can do round-up posts by food group. And by "food group" I mean "pizza." (It's a group—just like how gelato, hamburgers, and noodles are groups.)

All of these pizza outings have one thing in common: Kathy. She's a pizza addict. Although I've known her for years, it was only a few months ago that I found out that she likes to eat pizza a few times a week. I eat pizza a few times a month, maybe. It's a wonder she doesn't write for Slice, but she says she's not discerning enough. All slabs of bread covered in cheese and tomato sauce, beware—Kathy will suck the life out of you, and then digest you in a most painful bath of stomach acids.

So here's some pizza.

L'asso

L'asso

I was just going to say that I don't know how old L'asso is, but then came across their conveniently timed post announcing that they had their 5th birthday on July 15. Which confused the crap out of me because I'm almost positive that I remember the Chinese restaurant that used to be where L'asso is now, yet I've only been living in New York City for...not five years.

You know what this means: My brain is making stuff up. I'm pretty sure that's a sign that something is wrong. Like brain disintegration.

OHHH WHATEVER, I won't worry about it. ...what's this goo coming out of my ears...

Margherita

Kathy, Jessica, and I shared two pizzas and a salad. First off: pizza margherita D.O.C., my favorite kind of pizza. Tomato sauce, soft plops of buffalo mozzarella (in my opinion, it's worth paying extra for the buffalo origins), fresh basil, and extra virgin olive oil, with a sprinkling of oregano on a thin, slightly chewy, non-soggy crust. I don't think anything stood out about this pizza—it was just...simple and good. A++, WOULD EAT AGAIN.

This entry originally took place on July 22. I'll be in Virginia from today until August 2, which...you probably wouldn't even notice anyway because I have enough trouble trying to update this blog twice a week even when I'm not on vacation. Sigh. But if I seem less responsive than usual, that's the reason.

Cake! Three candles! WIN!

"Huh?" As I stood in the back dining room of Arirang, I stared at the bounty before me: a chocolate frosted cake pipped with the words "Manatees <3 Robyn" and a tablefull of friends I wasn't expecting to see.

"It's Robyn Appreciation Day!" Claire said.

"....Wuuuuuh?"

"June 22nd!"

"....Waaauuhuhrr?"

Oh god, that's my WTF face. ...How does anyone love me? Photo taken by Claire!!!

My confusion lasted for about another 10 minutes. The rusting, ill-maintained machine that is my brain balked at the idea that anyone would throw me a party without any reason. How can people be that nice? To me? Did I do anything to deserve this?

Oh, but there was a reason—it was 36 days until my birthday (August 27)! They pulled the ol' "Throw A Surprise Birthday Party Way Before The Real Birthday" trick. You wanna surprise someone? That's the way to do it.