the morning of saturday, december 30th, my mom let me borrow her car and i drove up to new york for a visit with my high school friends who live up there. i was going to stay with litza, who lives in queens. to get to her house, you ride the brooklyn-queens expressway and take the last exit before the triboro bridge into the bronx. for some reason i didn't recognize the exit and thought there was one more to go, but there wasn't, so next thing i knew i was in the bronx. it was reminiscent of the last time i visited litza in that i had to call her and ask for her and google's help in navigating me out of unknown territory. forty minutes and $4 in tolls across the triboro each way and i was back in queens and at litza's place.

later in the evening after meeting up with high school friends chris and beth we decided to go for korean food. litza did a little online research and came up with a place in bayside, queens called 함지박(hahm ji bach). we drove out there and found that it was actually pretty good.

when we walked in a middle aged man asked us in english how many we had in our party. i told him in korean that we had four people(네 명). his face lit up and he and i had a little korean conversation, the same one i always have when i speak a little korean to someone. they say, wow, you speak great korean. i modestly (and truthfully) reply that no, i only can speak a little. he even called over to another woman i'm assuming was his wife to tell her that i could speak korean. well, i was feeling pretty good, showed off my korean skills for my high school friends and i was hoping maybe we'd get some special treatment now at the restaurant.

the man led us towards the back of the restaurant to seat us. along the way i noticed that all the customers were korean, and i noted that the uncooked 삼겹살 (sam gyeop sal, pork) was fresh, both good signs that this was a good place. the man then led us into a separate room off the main dining room and they seated us all the way in the back of that room, as far away from the front door as you could be in the place. the new room was pretty big and almost entirely empty. there was one other party there, a large one with some children who were presumably put back there so as not to bother the other customers. were we put way in the back tucked away from everyone else for similar reasons? one never knows...

although it was surely strange, we didn't let it bother us and proceeded to enjoy a nice meal of �지불고기 (doeji bulgogi, spicy barbecued pork), �장찌개 (doenjang jjigae, bean paste stew), and lots of other delicious side dishes. it was fun introducing my friends to some food they hadn't tried before, but it was tough deciding from the menu what to get since there were so many good choices. you can't satisfactorily sample korean food in one night, you need at least a week but preferably more like a month.

tagged: bayside korean bbq korean food new york queens