Spicy – Every Day is a Food Day

After lunch in Myeong-dong, we headed to Seoul Station, where we would take the KTX train to Busan. Busan is the second largest city in South Korea and is the fifth largest seaport in the world! It’s famous for the beaches and seafood! If you want to travel to Busan from Seoul, you can get the KR Pass as a foreigner. You can get unlimited travel from 1 to 10 days, depending on the pass you buy. It’s a much cheaper deal. For us, we purchased the 3 day unlimited pass, and used it for a round trip. You also get a discount if you’re younger than 25 or are traveling with more than 2 people. Purchase it online before you go, and you can select any time after your reservation date. It took around 2 hours to arrive, but since we left Seoul late, we arrived early evening. We stayed in the Haeundae area, which is famous for the beach. We walked around the area and found a bunch of bars. We ended up looking for fried chicken, since we always see it in Korean dramas. The restaurant was called Mubanna Chondak and is a chain restaurant in Busan.

Kimchi and Tofu

It was really difficult to communicate in Busan, since they seemed to know less English. The server was still very friendly and tried his best to recommend us food. After ordering, he brought us complimentary appetizers. There was a size of kimchi, which I found spicier than usual. There was also tofu with sesame seeds on it. The tofu really has no flavour, but K loved it.

Spicy Octopus

Next, we tried the Spicy Octopus. It came on a grill on top of a hot pot stove. There were around 10 tiny octopi! After one bite, we all realized how spicy it was! Super spicy! Not to the point where I couldn’t feel my taste buds anymore, but one where I wanted to keep drinking water. The octopus was so tender though! The sauce was also really delicious. A definite recommend!

Boneless Chicken in Chili Pepper Paste Sauce

The server recommended us to get the Boneless Chicken in Chili Pepper Paste Sauce. He said it’s one of the more popular dishes. Again, it’s in a chili pepper paste sauce, so very spicy. Definitely not as spicy as the octopus though. It’s a mix of chicken that isn’t fried or battered, and is mixed with rice cake, corn, peas and comes with a side of noodles. You’re supposed to mix the noodles with the chicken, which I found quite interesting. We loved the rice cake mixed in and wish there was more. Sadly, we were looking for fried chicken, so we were a bit disappointed that we didn’t have the real fried chicken we always see. He also ended up putting down 2 orders of this, as he couldn’t understand what we wanted. Oh well. Tons of leftover though!

The chicken also comes with a cabbage salad that is topped with ketchup and mayo. This was definitely needed as our food was quite spicy!

Steamed Egg

Lastly, we also got a Steamed Egg, which is filled with green onions. Not bad, and was something to help calm our palettes down.

Overall, the food was actually pretty good here! It’s quite casual and almost seems like a fast food restaurant. I believe you can also choose the spice level for the food. We had asked for mild, but it’s still pretty spicy… I guess Koreans can really take their spice!

J’s home is in Sze Chuan and we always see her eating food that is drenched in red soup or chilies. I still don’t understand how she takes the heat but we finally decided to go try it out with her. She told us that New Spicy Chili Restaurant is a restaurant that serves dishes which are less spicy. Okay… sure… we’ll see about that…

The restaurant was around half empty when we arrived on a weekday afternoon, although there was a large table of diners who looked like they worked at the same office. Office lunch I suppose? Soon after, the place began to fill up though. Definitely do not expect any service whatsoever here. It is extremely hard to get the attention of the lady, and I saw her talking to the phone while speaking with another customer too… Some of us might think it’s rude, but I guess she gets her job done?

Chicken with Spicy Sauce

We started off with the Chicken with Spicy Sauce. In Chinese, the dish directly translates to Saliva Chicken. Sounds a bit gross eh, but it tasted really just like any other chicken, or perhaps it was free range chicken. However, it was drenched in a red liquid. It scared me at first, but guess what…this was probably one of the least spicy dishes we ordered. The chicken still had skin on the top, and it was topped with the spicy sauce which also consisted of the seeds inside the chilies. I didn’t dare try the chicken that was soaked at the bottom. I only grabbed the top pieces to be safe.

Sliced Beef with Special Spicy Sauce

Next up, we got the Sliced Beef with Special Spicy Sauce. This was definitely the next level of spicy! The beef was sliced thinly and was tender, and even though there didn’t seem to be as much sauce as the chicken, it was spicy! I’m guessing it was marinated in the sauce or something…

Spicy Bean Sprout

We wanted some veggies as well, so we chose the Spicy Bean Sprout, which was again topped with chilies… Funny enough, I actually began to be able to eat the food though. Either I was getting used to the spice, or my tongue was just plain numb, because I could barely taste anything by now. And so I just kept stuffing myself with food now. The Bean Sprouts are one of my favourite veggies as they are tender and easy to chew. I ended up eating a lot of this, as it was also one of the less spicy dishes.

Spicy Fish Hot Pot

The Spicy Fish Hot Pot had to be the spiciest dishes we ordered. It came in a sizzling hot pot and was literally a pot of red liquid… Inside were fish filets and potato or glass noodles. Yea, I definitely did not dare try the noodles since noodles always absorb the liquid, and there was no way I would be alive after eating that… I did try the fish, and I’m not even sure if it was hot in temperature or just spicy. Yea, I pretty much had no feelings on my taste buds by now… Fish was tender though!

Sizzling Fish

I’m not exactly why they call it the Sizzling Fish (actually the menu said suzzling fish, but I’m not sure if that’s even a word), because this should simply be called grilled squid. That’s basically what it was! What the heck is sizzling fish…? Anyways, this came hot and sizzling in a pan and the squid were placed on tin foil. It smelled and reminded me of night market squid! Yum! The squid was cooked tender and the spice level was medium. A more acceptable spice, or maybe I was just getting used to all this spicy food.

Oh and a tip if you can’t take spice is to never place your food that is soaked in the red sauce on your rice. Your rice ends up being so spicy, that you can’t use it to cool you down. I also wonder how people eat here during the summer… I swear I was sweating by the end of this lunch. But for all you spicy lovers, this is the place to go! Most of these dishes are also popular Sze Chuan dishes and are also chef recommended on the menu!

Every Day is a Food Day

Tag: Spicy

Mubanna Chondak (무봤나 촌닭): Korean Fried Chicken – Busan

New Spicy Chili Restaurant 小四川