Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Mapgirl does not cook. She CAN cook, but she does not like to cook for one and so rarely cooks. She uses dining out as an excuse not to hide in her apartment from the rest of the world.

Getting that out of the way, I am actually a very decent cook. There are a few things I do really well, like a full-on Thanksgiving dinner with homemade cornbread dressing. I can do it with my eyes closed at this age. But I leave the candied yam recipe to my mom, she likes the little marshmallows on top.

Korean food is a challenge for me. I can cook it at my mom’s house, but I really am not interested in slaving away in the kitchen to make all the little side dishes, plus the smell of kimchi is not so nice when it pervades the entire apartment. 500 sq feet isn’t hard to air out, but I’d rather not have my bedding smell like food in the first place.

This post was inspired by a dining budget disaster at Make Love Not Debt. I totally feel for you guys. Your post inspired this little rant of mine.

I do not typically eat Korean food in restaurants. It’s too expensive. I’d rather have a $4.00 taco for dinner and split a basket of chips and salsa with a friend. But every once in a while, I love to take my non-Korean friends out for their first meal of Korean BBQ. Usually I plan it out so it’s a wooden charcoal place that serves family style. So, when I went out this weekend to a highly recommended restaurant in Annandale called Hee Been, I was a little cheesed off. I should have taken the many recommendations by non-Koreans for this place with a grain of salt.

Don’t get me wrong, THE FOOD WAS GREAT. But it wasn’t the experience I like to have. I like the little side dishes on the table. I like the smell of burning charcoal, not gas grills. I like getting soup and BBQ. I like to cook it myself since I’m not slouch and I prefer my beef a little rarer than most Koreans do. At buffet, it’s just plain WEIRD. They cook the meat for you, the side dishes you have to get yourself on one plate and it makes it weird to share with non-Koreans who don’t get how Korean food really should be served.

The kicker? Well I expect Korean food to be expensive in the first place. I do. But the killer part was the cost of the buffet. For three people having two soft drinks, hot tea and no beer, it was over $100.00. I was very displeased. I think at a full service restaurant we could have eaten for cheaper, but it wouldn’t have been the mix of sushi and BBQ that we got. I was shopping for VALUE here in an authentic meal experience, not so much a smorgasbord of Asian food. (Again, let me stress, it was all really good, but as I told my friends, it was all banquet food, rather than the really homey stuff I like. And the sushi wasn’t good at all.)

Pitiful. The per person price for dinner was under $30, and I did see it on a small table sign, but since I veritably kidnapped my friends in Arlington to eat there, I couldn’t exactly get up and walk out. (It was at the request of a friend who is permanently leaving town.) But I was really really unhappy and stressed out about it. How do you show someone how to eat Korean properly when everyone is eating something different? BBQ in lettuce with garlic, scallions, and cho-jang is really good, but not exactly something you’re going to try without some prodding. And that’s exactly what happened. It’s not that I’m a control freak, but to me, dining Korean is a whole experience, and it is severely lessened by eating buffet-style. Family-style is the way to go, and trying the exotic stuff as a group is part of the fun.

There’s no crying in it for me, but certainly I had to turn down a last minute invitation for brunch on Sunday because I just felt I couldn’t do it after overspending on Saturday.

BTW, I’m going offsite this week for work, so there will be few posts during the day, but perhaps a post or two in the evening.