Exploring The Restaurants of Sannomiya

On Saturday night, Mike and Ilena decided to begin to execute their culinary plan of wandering around the absolutely-crammed-with-bars-and-restaurants parts of Sannomiya and choosing a different restaurant each week. This time, we chose a tiny Korean restaurant a block over from Higashimon Street. (We started simple - it had a picture menu, and we could read and understand a lot of the menu items, since they were written in katakana. As this project goes on, and we pick places without picture menus and/or menus written in kanji, this will become more difficult!).

This place was like eating in someone's living room. The restaurant had four tables, and was run by a Korean family - the wife was the waitress, the husband was the cook, and the grandmother was staff. (She peeled the biggest bowl of garlic we had ever seen at the table next to us.) The wife and grandmother were watching this ridiculous Korean soap-opera on a flat screen next to the kitchen. We were the only people in the restaurant.

The food was really authentic and very good. (Having been to Seoul, we can actually now comment on the authenticity with a little bit of authority!) We had a warming meal that included bi-bim-ba served in a stoneware bowl and an excellent Korean pancake (chijimi).

A successful start. (And we spotted some promising candidates for next Saturday night!)