There aren’t many western restaurants in Ulsan. McDonald’s is everywhere, but there are only three sit-down style places I know of. There’s a TGI Fridays, a Bennigan’s and an Outback Steak House. Not many choices for a boy who needs some western food to balance out all the garlic and red pepper ingested over the previous few months. MyeongHee and I decided to go to Fridays this weekend. I ordered a grilled steak which was actually pretty decent (Outback pan fries their steaks, which I consider an abomination.)  MyeongHee ordered the “Sanghai Salad,” (bad spelling theirs) which she thought would be an Asian dish of some sort. It was sad to see it come out as some sort of Korean-ized version of an American-ized version of some marketing guy’s idea of what a Chinese salad might be. I had a few bites and don’t think I’ve ever had salad as hot as that. Even she thought it was to hot, and she’s accustomed to eating raw hot peppers that kick my butt. My tongue required more than a couple of dousings of water and beer to cool the heat.  I’m betting the red pepper liberally sprinked on was to blame. It was the same with the fries that accompanied my steak – just a bit too much red pepper to call them “French” fries.

I think I’ve been doing the right thing all along: any western food I have a hankering for should be properly prepared here at home with whatever fresh ingredients I can find. The Koreans tend to use red pepper as we westerners use black pepper.  They’re just not interchangeable.