A Phoenix Rises From Simian Ashes

I only ate at "Ape with Pipe" once, and once was more than enough. Though the design was stylish and the music was funky, the meal tasted of burnt garlic, but the chef disagreed and assured me that the garlic was merely browned... With the ashen taste of culinary failure in my mouth I left that unholy restaurant and never set foot in it again.

2009 and "Ape with Pipe" has gone the way of the dinosaurs, in its stead we have the third establishment from the Buddha's Belly team: Berlin Cafe & Lounge.

Keeping the cool atmosphere of the previous restaurant, they have added that dark Buddha's Belly touch and have created a great looking venue.

The lunch menu is simple, offering a choice of Thai style stuffed omelette (12,000 won), Thai style spicy pasta (10,000 won), red curried chicken salad (12,000 won), mussels mouclade (12,000 won) and fish and chips with wasabi mayo (14,000 won). I went for the Thai style spicy pasta with optional prawns for a total of 14,000 won (plus tax).

The food arrived promptly and looked incredible. There was a worrying amount of fresh and dried chillies, but the menu had specified that it was "spicy". They weren't joking! This dish is for the bravest of the brave, those who can handle their heat and are not afraid to burn their mouths.

I wimped out and picked off the more fearsome looking 고추, but even with those gone, the spice remained and I spent most of the meal with a runny nose and a craving for dairy. That said, the chillies did not overpower the other flavours of the dish and the spaghetti was packed through with crunchy vegetables. The optional prawns were cooked to perfection and were plentiful.

Hopefully the other dishes on the menu might be a little less scary, but if you're looking for a great dish that'll blow your head off and leave you wanting more, then Berlin's Thai style spicy pasta may well do the job. By the end of the meal my plate was clean and the taste of burnt garlic was nowhere to be found. Very spicy, but very delicious. This fiery cafe has risen from the ashes of a mediocre ape and has been reborn into something wonderful.

Berlin Cafe & Lounge is located on the hill above Noksapyeong station and can be accessed from the steep road up the hill opposite McDonalds. Buddha's Belly's website doesn't have any details on Berlin at the moment, but you can call them on 02 749 0903.

Five Reasons Why You Need To Go See "Old Partner"

On Thursday I went down to the CGV Yongsan cinema to check out one of the biggest hits of the year. 워낭소리 (Old Partner) is a documentary about a husband, a wife and their ox. All of them have reached the end of their lives and are coming to terms with what that means, the husband is 80, the wife is 77 and the ox is 40 years old. The director brings us into their lives and gives us a glimpse at the joy and sadness that they suffer through. It can be a hard watch at times and there are a couple of moments of animal cruelty that may upset some audience members, but it is a film that deserves seeing and here are the five reasons why:

1. The film gives us a chance to see a Korea which may be wholly unfamiliar. For those of us living in Seoul, we never see what life is like outside the metropolis and while we may see the elderly at markets, on buses or around the city, we may never get a chance to see how they live. This film focusses on one couple, but can bring a wealth of understanding about the elderly community and their place in a rapidly changing society. As well as showing the suffering they have endured to ensure their children's success in life.

2. Watching this film on dvd at home is incomparable to the experience of watching it in the cinema with an audience. I was surrounded by ajummas and ajosshis, who talked all the way through the film (which on other occasions I would have been annoyed by) and it was fascinating to see how they reacted to the story unfolding on screen and how their reactions compared to my own. For the short duration of the film I felt a common bond with the audience and felt a little closer to understanding older Koreans.

3. Support independent and documentary film-makers. Korea has its good and its bad when it comes to film, but more often than not unfunny comedies and sappy love stories get the big bucks and the big publicity, while more interesting projects are left to rot. This is a country where the award winning 지구를 지겨라! (Save The Green Planet!) was shunned, yet 조폭 마누라 (My Wife Is A Gangster) got the funding for two appalling sequels. Stand up for interesting cinema and make sure that we never have to watch 아유레디 2.

4. Support english subtitling for Korean language films. If we're lucky we get a chance to see one or two subtitled films at the cinema every year (the most recent being "The Good, The Bad and The Weird"), but if foreign crowds don't flock to these screenings then maybe we won't get any more. I for one, am very eager to see 박찬욱's (Park Chan-wook) new film 박쥐, but I'd much prefer it if the lovely people at CGV Yongsan put out a subtitled version. 

5. It's a very good film. If you're a fan of tragic love stories or you enjoy documentaries or you have a secret passion for oxen then this is the movie for you. This is the best documentary I've seen in the past year and it deserves an audience. 

So if you are in Seoul and interested in catching a glimpse of rural Korea then head on down to Yongsan for a subtitled screening of Old Partner. Thanks to Korean Pop Wars for highlighting the screenings. 

According to Naver.com screenings for Sunday 1st March are at: 0910, 1100, 1250, 1440, 1625, 1810, 2005, 2200, 2350.

For Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (2, 3, 4 March) times are: 0850, 1040, 1230, 1420, 1610, 1800, 2000, 2155, 2345.

There are no further listings, but new times for the week are generally released every Wednesday.

Bombomb - The secret little Italian place

Opposite Kabinnet, across from the Cheil building on the main Itaewon road is a tiny little restaurant that deserves your attention. Bombomb seats about twenty people, has a staff of one (chef/owner/waitress) and is the cutest and cheapest Italian restaurant in Itaewon.

The lunch menu consists of two dishes and that's it! You can either have the cream spaghetti with chopped steak and mushrooms or the oil spaghetti with clams, they both come in at 9,000 won and offer one of the cheapest lunch sets in the area. 

For your money you get access to the small salad bar and the tasty bread, plus your chosen dish. The salad bar is simple, but the greens are fresh and the bread seems to be home-baked.

I ordered the cream spaghetti and was not disappointed. Bite-size pieces of fillet steak mixed with juicy chunks of mushrooms, with enough sauce to cover the ample portion of spaghetti, but not too much as too drown the dish. Topped off with a generous helping of freshly cracked black pepper and grated parmesan cheese.

The spaghetti was perfectly cooked and the beef was very tender. The sauce was quite salty, but the mixture of cream, beef and mushrooms worked well together, forming a very satisfying lunch. A far superior spaghetti to most Korean Italian restaurants.

This tiny kitchen produces wonderful food and the dinner menu's meatballs are well worth a try. 

Bombomb's menu is very small and in Korea that can be the sign of a good restaurant (Disclaimer: small menus don't always mean wonderful food...). The owner is not stretching her skills too thin and is giving us the best that her kitchen can offer. I've eaten here a few times and have not been disappointed and during Korea's economic recession it is very pleasing to be able to find a great Italian lunch for under 10,000 won.

If you fancy sampling Bombomb's menu then take the Cold Stone Creamery exit out of Itaewon station and head down past Starbucks, Sortino's and Ola Mario until you get to the humungous Cheil building. Then right in front of you, past the zebra crossing, is the warm welcoming yellow of Bombomb. Take a chance, try your luck in this tiny little restaurant and you won't be disappointed. Call Bombomb on 02 794 8770.

Magpie Hunter in Itaewon

On my way home this afternoon, trotting through the back streets of Itaewon I was rather surprised to see a man with a rifle. 

Nobody was screaming or cowering in fear, so I decided not to run, but to ask him what he was doing. Turns out he's a magpie hunter. The dastardly magpies of Itaewon are nesting in the pylons and so must be shot.

The writing on his jacket is 유해 야생 동물 (까치) 기동 포획 반 (Which I think means "harmful wild animal (magpie) rapid capture group").

I saw him take one down, but when I ventured outside later on there were still plenty of magpies and no sign of the hunter. I wonder if I'll see him and his rifle in these parts again.

(HDR photos processed with photomatix)

Copyright Infringement Tuesday (Undead Edition)

I popped down to Yongsan today in the hopes of finding some interesting new additions to my film collection. I browsed around Yeinsa and was not disappointed. Taking them up on their 4 dvds for 9,900 won offer, I managed to pick up a couple of Korean films (잎 and 플라스틱 트리), a substandard animation (Happily N'Ever After starring the late, great George Carlin) and this little beauty:

Zombie Wars!!!!!!! What could possibly be better than this? A war... with zombies! An inspiring combination. I knew that I had to have this film and when I took a closer look at the cast list I was certain it would be incredible:

Randy Quaid, Gina Gershon, Shannon Doherty, James Brolin, Robert Wagner, Swoozie Kurtz and Tom Skerrit? With zombies? This is too good to be true! Looking closer at the spelling of "Swoozin Kurtz" I started to realise that may be all is not as it should be.

Back home and after a quick search on imdb, I find that none of the above stars have gone anywhere near Zombie Wars and the director is not even Dick Lowry, it is in fact David A. Prior (Director of such classics as Raw Justice, Raw Nerve, Future Force and Aerobi-cide). The star-studded cast and crew list has actually been lifted from a 2005 tv movie called Category 7: The End of the World. Damn you Korean dvd manufacturer, you have shattered my zombie filled dreams...

Fortunately I also picked up the blu-ray edition of Hellboy: The Golden Army, so my crushing disappointment did not last too long.

UPDATE: Just watched Zombie Wars and the dvd manufacturers have outdone themselves. Not a single image from the dvd cover seems to come from the film. No Roman soldier zombies in sight. A severe disappointment.

Sparta!

Matthew Steer, star of the british stage and screen has appeared in a teeny weeny little short film entitled: 3 1/2 A Tale of obsession. It has nothing to do with Korea, but he's a very funny boy: 

3 1/2 - a tale of obsession - watch more funny videos

Matthew is the one without the beard.

Sandman in Korean!

Wonderful news for Korean speaking fans of Neil Gaiman - The first two volumes of The Sandman graphic novels have been published in hangul.

Preludes and Nocturnes is titled 서곡과 야상곡 and The Doll's House is 인형의 집. Each volume is priced at 14,000 won and are published by 시공사 (Sigong). The back of each book lists "The complete Sandman library", so hopefully we'll be getting the the other nine volumes over the coming months/years....

For those curious, the titles are as follows:

1. Preludes and Nocturnes 서곡과 야상곡

2. The Doll's House 인형의 집

3. Dream Country 꿈의 땅

4. Season of Mists 안개의 계절

5. A Game of You 당신의 게임

6. Fables & Reflections 우화들

7. Brief Lives 짧은 생애

8. Worlds' End 세상의 끝

9. The Kindly Ones 친절한 그들

10. The Wake 장례 전야

11. The Endless Nights 영원의 밤

It's good to see that Sigong have taken the lead in translating some of the best graphic novels into Korean with Watchmen, Justice, Kingdom Come, Ronin and V for Vendetta already published, here's hoping they get round to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Transmetropolitan, Preacher and Fables.

My Chelsea - Stylishly Disappointing

Snuggled next to Gecko's Garden, behind the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon, My Chelsea is a good looking restaurant. Oozing Soho cool with hardwood floors and warm creams and reds, this restaurant screams fashion.

Its simple lunch menu offers a selection of eleven dishes ranging from the Daily Brunch (9,000 won) to the Garden Pizza (15,000 won). I settled on the Pesto Cream Pasta (14,000 won) and my friend went for the Owner Special  (14,000 won).

To start out, two tiny pieces of rather bland bread. Better than the usual stuff at Paris Baguette, but nothing to write home about.

Next up was a surprise bowl of pumpkin soup. Neither my friend nor I had expected to receive this and it was plonked in the middle of the table. Maybe sharing a large pot of Kimchi chiggae is par for the course, but splitting a bowl of pumpkin soup seemed more than a little odd to us. The soup, like the bread, was not bad, but failed to impress. Free soup is always welcome, even if it is a little too sweet.

The main courses arrived next and the Owner Special looked fantastic. A luxurious chicken sandwich with a side salad and fries. The chicken was a little dry, but still very tasty.

The menu claimed that there was "meat sauce" on the sandwich and the waiter also insisted that beef was used in the sauce, however, my friend could taste no beefy goodness, only the vegetables and the sprinkling of feta cheese. Then again, a lack of "meat sauce" on the sandwich is probably a good thing....

The Pesto Cream Pasta came with two slices of soft, tasteless baguette which were already a little soggy from their time on top of the sauce. I'm a great fan of pesto, but I've never had pesto cream. If today's meal is anything to go by, I probably won't have it again. The cream completely overpowered the garlic, pine nuts and parsley; the basil didn't even stand a chance. Despite assurances from the waiter that the pesto was made with basil, I couldn't taste it at all. Cream and parsley were the stars, with the odd squish of a piece of pine nut.

Like the breads and the soup, the main characteristic of the dish was its blandness. No strong flavours stood out and nothing impressed. A rather dull meal.

The service at My Chelsea is fast and friendly, but that doesn't make up for the disappointing food. Hopefully, over time, this place will improve, but for now you're probably better off heading to My Thai or My China.

To get to My Chelsea, come out of Itaewon station and head down the side alley next to the Hamilton Hotel. Turn left and My Chelsea is on the right hand side of the road opposite Syd and Mels. Call them on 02 749 1373.

Copyright Infringement Tuesday (Australian Cowboy Edition)

With a bandaged bleeding David Wenham on the cover, this dvd seemed like a sure-fire blood and guts western classic. I'd not heard of "Five Guns", but I thought it would be worth a shot. Strangely enough, David Wenham wasn't listed in the credits on the bottom of the cover and doesn't appear in the film in any way, shape or form.

"Five Guns" is a misleading moniker for this Les Mayfield directed 2001 western. Its real name is "American Outlaws" and it stars a young Colin Farrell as Jesse James, the famous bank robber.

David Wenham also starred in a Western in 2001, but his was called "Dust". He acted alongside Joseph Fiennes and Adrian Lester and happens to spend a large part of the film with his chest wrapped in bandages and a shotgun in his hand. Thanks to Youtube, you can see first hand evidence of the dashing David as he intimidates those dastardly Turks around him: 

(Notice any similarities to the picture on the dvd cover?)

Great going korean dvd maker you've put the wrong star on the cover and made up a different title for the movie you're selling! If only you put a blurry photo of Jon Voight (also not appearing in this film) on the back, then you'd have the hat trick... What? You did? Thanks dvd maker, you're the best!

Bearded Jon is the one on the right.

While I couldn't find the same picture on the internet, it seems that this photo of Angelina Jolie's father may well come from "Return to Lonesome Dove", but I have no substantial proof. However, I can confirm that Jon Voight does not pop his head into frame during the whole of "American Outlaws", shame really as he might have made this rather turgid western a little more exciting.

I leave you with the Wonderful Wenham and his trailer for Dust:

The Wine Cellar 1418

Down the road to Bogwang-dong, past the antique shops and the "red door" is a shabby looking doorway that leads to one of best wine shops in the area.

The Wine Cellar 1418 is compact, but they still manage to fit in more than their fair share of wines. They are still refitting and refurbishing at the moment, so things can be a little messy, but they promise that'll everything will be spick and span very soon.

All tastes are catered for, whether you're looking for a high end champagne or just a cheap Australian red. Their website (which seems to be down at the moment) offers special deals of the day, though you'll need to exercise your Korean skills to use it.

To get to The Wine Cellar take the road opposite the Hamilton Hotel and follow it down past the antique shops, about a three minute walk, until you can see large apartment buildings on the right hand side, The Wine Cellar's entrance is directly opposite. You can call them on 02 794 3737.

Kate's Kitchen's Slightly Psychotic Notice Board

Kate's Kitchen in Itaewon used to be Apgujeong cool. Judging from the notice board, either the staff have got a little more light hearted or just plain crazy.....

Hong Seok-chon's Quest To Conquer Itaewon

홍석천 (Hong Seok-chon) continues his quest to take over the whole of Itaewon with yet another restaurant. My Chelsea is located next to Gecko's Garden on the road behind the Hamilton Hotel. From a quick peek at the menu outside, it's doing the usual steaks and pastas, plus the bastard son of breakfast and lunch - brunch. Not sure why we need another brunch venue in Itaewon, but hopefully Hong's new addition to his empire will give us a better standard of eggs, waffles and pancakes...

The erstwhile entertainer now owns five bars/restaurants in the Itaewon area, all within a five minute walk of each other: Our Place, My Thai, My China, My Song and My Chelsea. I've eaten in My Thai and My China and have been pleased with the meals I've had. As for My Song, I think it's a karaoke wine bar venue sort of place, located above My Thai. Long live Emperor Hong, may he continue to feed us all!

9 Timo Restaurant and Bar

Round the back of the Hamilton Hotel, parallel to the main Itaewon street there is a veritable menagerie of restaurants. Whether you fancy Spanish, Bulgarian, French, Greek, Thai, Belgian, Australian, Indian, Chinese or Italian there are many differents places to choose from. 9 Timo is a relative newcomer, just over six months old, it provides a variety of pizzas, pastas and risottos to please hungry patrons.

9 Timo offers a weekday lunch set menu, offering a choice of: Seafood tomato spaghetti with garlic bread and coffee (15,000 won); classic alfredo fettuccine with garlic bread and coffee (14,000 won); grilled chicken sandwich and coffee (9,000 won); grilled ham & cheese sandwich and coffee (9,000 won). 10% tax not included.

The restaurant is stylishly lit, with oil burners on every table. Smooth latin beats blare out of the speakers and the rough brick walls give the place a gritty cool. The only problem with the decor is if your eyes stray upwards and see the ugly, bulky air-conditioning units hanging down from the ceiling.

The view from the main windows is not the best in the world, the Hamilton Hotel car park not really being a sight for sore eyes. However, if you concentrate hard enough on the food, it's not too bad.

I went for the "classic alfredo fettuccine" and was not disappointed. The sauce may have been a little soupy, but it was well seasoned with a pleasant pepperiness. The fettuccine was cooked to perfection and the portion was generous.

There was perhaps a little too much onion, but the three different kinds of mushrooms and tender pieces of bacon mixed well together and pushed the dish well above most other medium priced Italian eateries.

The garlic bread was tasty, but nothing out of the ordinary and the coffee served after the meal was freshly made and strong. The host was affable and the service was very quick, but that may be because there were only two customers in the restaurant between 12.00 and 1.00. The waiter claimed that they were busy in the evenings, but that lunchtimes were usually quiet.

You can contact 9 Timo on 02 790 4285 or visit their website.