My favorite quote about eating Korean food (which is famously hot – in both senses of the word)
“If I don’t sweat, how do I know I’ve eaten?”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz0vr1vd-O4]
Hotness in Korean food is so important that we have a separate word for spicy hot and temperature hot – and they are never confused.
Chad, Christian, and I had an unexpectedly fun day last weekend.
We checked out the OC Market, which a huge weekend swap meet in the parking lot of where the OC Fair takes place every summer. Entry is $2 and you can find anything from knock-off sunglasses to discount bottles of your favorite shampoo. There are also lots of food vendors plying you with samples and several conventionally-grown produce stands where you can walk off with 25 pounds of produce for under $10. No joke. I could barely carry our groceries to the car.
Then we cruised over to H Mart, the nearby Korean market to eat at the little hot pot place just inside the front of the market. It’s called Bibigo and it turned out to be an economical way to get a Korean food fix.
The hot pots actually sit directly on top of the flaming burners until just before they are filled, so when your dish arrives, it is not only spicy hot, but bubbling HEAT hot. YUM.