Bamboo House

I am so sorry that I haven’t updated in forever. It’s the end of the semester, and I have been swamped with papers and exams. I have finals for the next 2 weeks! Yikes! Wish me luck! I will be holed up in the library for the next week, but with yummy food of course.

JW and I went to Bamboo House a gazillion years ago during Fall Break (it was her birthday!!), and I have finally gotten around to writing about it. Once exams are over, I am going to catch up with this blog. I will! I promise.

Bamboo House is mom and pop Korean restaurant that has, according to my Korean friends, the most authentic Korean food in Charlottesville. It’s actually a long drive out (about 20 min.), and it’s really easy to miss because it’s this very unassuming warehouse like building on the side of the highway. Blink and you’ll miss it, so keep your eyes peeled! The outside is very sketchy looking, but the inside is pretty nice. There is this humongous tv that is always showing Korean channels, and you can sing karaoke too! Haha so Asian, but pretty cool. I sang here once with a group, and they have a HUGE variety of music from English to Chinese to Korean to any other Asian country’s songs.

I think the lady who runs this restaurant does both the front of the house AND the back of the house, so she is the chef/waitress/hostess all bundled in one person. WOW! She’s pretty amazing and super nice.

JW and I ordered a ridiculous amount of food, and somehow we managed to finish most of it. Yeah. I stretched my stomach beyond its limits that night. I should get a medal for it. Anyways, the food was DELICIOUS!

Spicy Pork Bulgogi

Spicy Pork Bulgogi – I love meat! Yummy, juicy pork with lots of spicy flavor which you wrap in a big piece of lettuce! I definitely recommend this. It was a nice change from the usual bulgogi and kalbi, especially because it was spicy. And if you know me, you know that I live for spicy food.

Gom Tang

Gom Tang – This was my FAVORITE of the night. It’s oxtail soup with slices of beef and rice noodles. I have learned that in some Korean restaurants , they will bring you this jar of salt, and you can add in however much salt you want in the soup. Here, she seasoned it for us already, and it was perfectly seasoned. The soup was rich, the noodles soft, and the beef tender. Oh such delicious explosions in my mouth…

Jap Chae

Jap Chae – This was kind of a failure. It’s cellophane noodles stir fried with lots of different veggies, which sounded really good. However, I thought it was a little on the sweet side, which I did not like. I think this was the only one we didn’t finish.

Yummy kimchee!!!

The pickled radishes was my fav!

And of course, the multitude of banchan. Here we have napa cabbage kimchee, cucumber kimchee, 2 different kinds of pickled radishes, spinach, bean sprouts, and anchovies (not shown). You know, just the banchan alone with some rice would be enough for a meal. I always have to restrain myself from eating so much banchan in order to save room for the food that I actually ordered.

So much fooooodddd!

This is our giant table of food. I know. We were kind of crazy.

Our overflowing table...hahah

All in all, Bamboo House is amazing! One of my absolute favorite places in Charlottesville.  I highly recommend it for everyone. Oh, and they have Chinese food on the menu too, but don’t get that stuff. First of all, it’s American Chinese food. Second of all, this is a Korean restaurant so order what they’re good at.

Bamboo House

4831 Seminole Trail
Charlottesville, VA 22911-8301

 

Yummy Korean BBQ

I took my brothers out to lunch, and we went to this tiny Korean restaurant right next our house that is a favorite of mine. The name of the restaurant is absolutely hilarious. It used to be called Tasty Korean BBQ, but now they changed it to Yummy Korean BBQ. I have no idea why. It only has 4 tables and is very much a mom and pop, hole-in-the-wall type of place, but I love these types of restaurants. The décor is actually very nice for such a small place. Everything was very Ikea-esque.

Mandoo with bean sprouts and broccoli

My younger younger brother got the mandoo mini plate with broccoli and bean sprouts.

Kalbi with potatoes and bean sprouts

Kalbi with kimchi, potatoes, and broccoli

My older younger brother and I both got the Kalbi. I always mean to try something else like the japchae, but I always end up getting kalbi because I love it so much. The plates come with rice, and you get to choose some panchan. I do wish that they had more variety with the panchan, but I forgive them because they are such a tiny place.

It was so yummy!

Yummy Korean BBQ

1255 Fordham Dr # 113
Virginia Beach, VA 23464

 

You are the Dancing Queen! Young and Sweet! Only Seventeen! (NYC Part 3)

We went to meet CS in Chinatown today, so we had breakfast there as well, trying a different bakery. Unfortunately, I was so hungry that I devoured the food before realizing that I didn’t take a single picture. Stupid me. But I can tell you that the pork and preserved egg congee and the sticky rice bun were both heavenly. I’ve never had a sticky rice bun before, but I really liked it. The sticky rice was like how it would taste in a zong zi, so it had a great savory flavor to complement the slightly sweet tang of the bun.

I was watching the Travel Channel one day, and they did a program on the weirdest bathrooms around the world. One of the places was Peep, a Thai restaurant in Soho, where the bathroom walls are all 2-way mirrors, so that they look like mirrors on the outside, but from the inside, everything’s transparent. You can “peep” at all the people in the restaurant from inside the bathroom! I thought this was hilarious, and I was determined to find this place while I’m in NYC. Goal accomplished. We went there for lunch, and I had a blast. It’s kind of ridiculous how excited I was to eat here. Not only were the bathrooms just as I imagined, but the food was delicious.

Thai Ice Tea

Grilled Teriyaki Calamari

My first plate was Grilled Teriyaki Calamari. It was very tasty with just the right amount of chewy-ness. I loved it!

Panang with Tofu

My second plate was the Panang with Tofu. The spices took some getting used to, but it’s one of those dishes that taste better as you eat more of it. I was very satisfied.

Peppered Spinach Dumplings (AN's first plate)

Turmeric Saffron Fried Rice with Chicken (AN’s 2nd plate)

Horseradish Caesar Salad (SS’s 1st plate)

Grilled Vegetables Salad (CS’s 1st plate)

Chicken Pad Thai (both SS and CS’s 2nd plate)

I loved the atmosphere of the place. It was very trendy and hip and looked way more expensive than it actually was. The service was great, which cannot be said for any of the previous restaurants that we’ve been to this weekend. Plus, I was extremely entertained by the bathrooms…I love this place so much!

It's Peep!

View from inside the bathroom!

For dinner, we went exploring in Koreatown and went to Shilla Korean BBQ. They had an extensive menu, and I had such a hard time deciding. I really wanted to try their barbeque since they actually cook it in front of you, but I wasn’t in the mood for so much meat. Many of the soups looked delicious as well, but my poor stomach could only hold so much. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had bottomless stomachs and could just eat and eat and eat and never have to worry about getting full and getting fat?

Gol Dop

Gol Dop – I loved it. It reminded me of the Chinese bao zai fan (clay hot pot rice). I only got a picture of it after I mixed all the parts together because I was too eager to dig in and completely forgot about my camera until CS reminded me. I only wished that the sides of the bowl had more of the crispy, burnt rice. That would have made it perfect. Also, it seems to me that the spicy sauces often used in Korean cuisine are never as spicy as they look. The spicy sauce and the kimchi are all such a bright red but really not that spicy. Here is what everyone else ordered:

Bulgogi Gol Dop (AN's order)

Vegetable Fried Rice (CS's order)

Side Dishes

More Side Dishes

We went to Red Mango, which was right next door, afterwards. I’ve never had Red Mango before, but AN positively raved about it, so I had to try it. Red Mango is basically fro-yo using real yogurt, and they have a ton of different toppings. I thought it was adorable how they had the calorie count next to every topping. We got the original with mochi and kiwi. I discovered that I really like mochi, but the yogurt was not my favorite. The sourer, less sweet taste was really different. Maybe it’s one of those things that’ll grow on me. Sadly, I have no picture of the yogurt because we just stood on the side of the street and demolished it within 5 minutes.

Addresses

Peep

SoHo
177 Prince Street
(between Thompson St & Sullivan St)
New York, NY 10012

Shilla Korean Barbeque

Murray Hill
37 W 32nd St
(between 5th Ave & Broadway)
New York, NY 10001-3804

Red Mango

Murray Hill
39 W 32nd St
(between 5th Ave & Broadway)
New York, NY 10001