Esther Food Adventure: The Phantom of the Opera

20-21 November 2010

The Phantom of the Opera brought us to London during this cold autumn season. So, of course we had to warm ourselves up with some lovely, yummy food!

First stop, Arang, Korean restaurant in Central London. The restaurant has a contemporary interior design, the part I liked most was the ceiling lamps with the air extractor for indoors BBQ on a hot-plate.

Korean cuisine is unique in the way that each meal is made up of many starter sized dishes, and in almost every meal there must be a plate of kimchi. Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish made of fermented/pickled mixed vegetables. Usually tastes a bit sour and varied spiciness.

The little bowl containing the red and spicy looking vegetable is the kimchi. The oval plate holds the fried glass noodles with assorted vegetables while the rectangular plate holds my favourite fried dumplings. The fried dumplings is very similar to those served in Chinese cuisine - flour dough wrapped around minced meat stuffings then deep fried.

This dish consists of Korean 'year cake (literally translated from Chinese) or rice cake. It is, as the name suggests, made of rice. The rice cakes are fried with glass noodles in sweet and sour sauce. A rather nice dish with sweet and sour taste, the rice cakes is quite chewy, like thick jelly.

Sizzling cod fish slices fried in teriyaki sauce with onions. Cooking on the hotplate gives the cod fish a kind of chargrilled flavour, while the teriyaki sauce and onions add sweetness to it. A rather nice dish to go with rice!

Lo and behold! The hotpot! Korean hotpots can come in many different flavours and ingredients. This one that we ordered includes kimchi, tofu, pork belly slices, glass noodles and lots of spices and chillies! Quite hot for my liking but perfect for my friends who can take very hot food! My favourite ingredient in this dish has to be the slices of pork belly and tofu which soaked up all the flavours of the soup.

This next dish is absolutely wonderful and delicious! Ginseng chicken soup. Ginseng is a very popular 'food' in Korea. It is a root thought to be very nutricious for human consumption for many years in the Chinese and Korean history. This dish is made with a whole chicken stuffed with glutinous rice and boiled in soup with ginseng for hours and hours in a claypot. All the flavours of chicken meat and bones and ginseng creates a very delicious soup.

The waiter cutting up the chicken into smaller pieces.

And more cutting.

~Ta~da~ we get chicken pieces, rice and ginseng served in soup. YUMMYLICIOUS!!!!!!

21st November -Taiwanese cuisine

This place is so good that we decided to pay another visit this trip!

Chef preparing our Dim Sum

Deep fried tofu with prawn paste stuffings. Sauce made of corn flour, chinese mushrooms and spring onions...

Taiwanese famous vermicelli in thick soup. The soup was boiled for hours with pig large intestine, mussells and other ingredients. Seasoned with black vinegar and soya sauce. Very delicious and full of flavours!