Celebrated the man's 48th at NAE:UM with its new menu 'Episode 5: Frontyard Barbecue'. Now, you don't have to do optional selections or add-ons. The menu now offers two options of a 'Classic' ($198++) or a 'Signature' ($258). The 'Classic' skips all the add-ons, and the 'Signature' includes everything.
The friends went to Jeju Island and brought back a bottle of badang for the man. We brought it to dinner. The badang went perfectly with the duck galbi. I took a sip. I didn't take that much of it. It tasted like a mix of very alcoholic kombucha and apple cider vinegar. It's not my kind of fermented flavors. *shudder I stuck to the milder crisp flavors of the more familiar sake.
There was a gorgeous heap of cured bonito with winter melon and gooseberry. That was literally an explosion of flavors. Tangy, sweet, crisp and savory all at the same time. The dongchimi came with a wrap and inside held uni, prawn, scallop and mung beans. I loved these two items!
In this 'Episode 5', the somyeon is topped with black pork belly. It was delicious too, since the noodles were kept tangy and light. Hmmm. But personally, I like it better when somyeon is topped with fish because it tasted lighter overall without the heaviness of a red meat. (Okay, I veer from culinary tradition and I define pork as red meat because it has more myoglobin than poultry or fish.)
The mains of meats came in the form of fish and beef, and pork. The red mullet with canola blossom and fermented bean paste was beautifully seared. The beef was a sirloin cut of wagyu with sweet potato leaf and shishito pepper. It was fatty, and tasted so oily. There's more fat than actual meat that I could chew. Eeeeeeps. I'm not fond of sirloin or wagyu. Dohhh.
The rice came in a pot of doeji-galbi-bap — pork ribs with multigrain rice and black truffles. That was good. The pork ribs were shredded and mixed into the rice and topped up with black truffles. Nice. Although they could have skipped the truffles — they do absolutely nothing for the flavors; they're good only for show. Black truffles are simply...... tasteless. We loved all the three sides of banchan that came with the rice — lotus root, white kimchi and pork paste.
The first dessert of melon ice-cream with lime punch and soju was surprisingly good! The vanilla yoghurt was thankfully made into granita at the side. So it didn't mix in with the melon and lime. Whewww. Well, you need to like the taste of melons. I still loved my usual jujube ice-cream with honey and charcoal biscuit leaf. Since it was the man's birthday, we trotted out a birthday cake for him. It was a sweet potato and passionfruit mousse cake. Light and gorgeous!
The final flourish of dagwa was also strangely tasty. I didn't like the previous iterations, but now, they seemed to have changed it up a bit in the ratio. The cube of nuts is still fine and crunchy. That rice cake isn’t as sour. The pineapple jelly is new and quite cute.
The man loved everything about dinner tonight. We took a late seating at 8.30pm since this was a last-minute reservation. Our last bite of the night was taken at 11pm. Oh my. It was the latest that we've eaten dinner in a while. But at least the carbs ingested for him were kept low; he could still answer to the Lumen. Heh.
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