What is 호캉스 if there is no breakfast buffet in the hotel right? Breakfast buffet has always been one of the things that I look forward to when I go on a trip, especially when I am staying in a nice hotel. I was sooo excited for the food I literally forgot to take photos of the restaurant and the food choices they offered...Before entering the restaurant, the staff checked temperatures of each individual and assigned seats for everybody, at a distance, to comply with the 1m distance apart regulation due to COVID-19.
The food choices offered were just nice. There were western breakfast and Korean breakfast choices. Some of the basics western breakfast like omelette, tater tots, bacon, sausages, croissant, baked beans, bread, milk, cornflakes and etc were offered. Korean breakfast choices were kimchi (of course), rice, seaweed soup, soup noodle, steamed dumplings, a few side dishes like braised lotus root and cubed radish. There were also two coffee machines where you can get americano, latte, and cappuccino. And of course, there were also juices and tea. Oh and other supplements such as butter, jam, and yogurt!
I've always noticed that, if the sausage provided in a buffet is high quality/taste good, the other food will taste good as well. So if you want to know the quality of the buffet, look at the sausages!
I got a window seat to enjoy my breakfast!
I got back to the hotel after eating breakfast to rest a little more before checking out. It was raining on the first day at Incheon so I couldn't take nice picture of the scenery outside the wide window in the hotel room. The sky was clearer on the second day, so I took some before leaving. Look at this scenery and the blue sky. Don't you want to just stay here and chill in the hotel and order food delivery? I was on full tourist mode so I had to chop chop and move to the next destination.
The schedule for today was to checkout at 12pm and head to Chinatown right after, so I woke up earlier around 8am to have breakfast so that I won't be too full for lunch later at Chinatown. But I love breakfast so much, I ate what I want and...yeah...I was kinda full when I was suppose to eat at Chinatown. I had a lot of expectation and hope when it comes to Chinatown, cause I was expecting some Chinese food, but all I can see was black bean noodles :( It is more like a Korea-Chinatown I would say.
There were a lot of people after 1pm, you can see long long queues outside of restaurants. I was still full at that time, so I just went around for some small snacks instead of heavy meals. The first thing I bought was an ice-blended beverage because it was sooo hot that day and there weren't any shelters.
While I was walking around, looking for food to eat, I saw this cutie. A picture of NU'EST JR munching on a pastry on the variety show 'Night Goblin 밤도깨비'. Well, there goes my first food in Chinatown! It is call red bean cake/红豆饼 (홍두병). The original flavour inside the cake is red bean but they have a variety of other flavours such as cream cheese, mango, green tea and dark chocolate. Honestly, I would love to try the red bean and dark chocolate flavour. But guess what I ate? :D
I couldn't really see what flavour JR was eating in the picture so I did a quick search on Naver. He was eating the cream cheese flavour. So, do you know what flavour I chose? :D
It was soooo good. Probably the best thing I've eaten for the whole day that day. No, its not because JR ate it but it was really really good. If you have the chance to try it out, definitely buy one cream cheese to try! It is 2,000won per piece and it is not a small portion. The cream inside was full too! *writing this post makes me want to eat it again*
I have been craving for Chinese fried dough (油条) so bad and I was so sad to find out that there isn't any shop selling it at Incheon Chinatown. While I was strolling around, I saw this small restaurant that has no line and a picture of 油条 on the big printed-menu at the entrance. I immediately went inside and ask to take away one 油条. It looks different that the one I usually have, I don't know if they purposely made it to look this way or this was a defect one LOL but it looked like a grenade. It was fat and short. Unfortunately, it did not taste good. I stop eating after two bites so that I don't get full any further. It became my breakfast the next day.
Instead of eating black bean noodles, I decided to go for something different. I went to a restaurant called 美味珍 (미미진) that claimed that they are a Hong Kong Dimsum specialty restaurant (홍콩딤섬 전문점). In Korea, Koreans like to go to specialty restaurant to get the best taste of a certain food. For example, if you want a good cold noodle (냉면), you should go to a cold noodle specialty restaurant (냉면 전문점) to eat to get the best quality cold noodle. That's why I had a high expectation when I saw that. And on Naver blog reviews, it does says that the chef has been making Dimsum for over 10 years. Although it was expensive, I still gave it a try.
Sadly, it disappointed me. I ordered siew mai (steamed shrimp dumpling) 烧卖, char siew bao (steamed BBQ pork bun) 叉烧包 and xiao long bao (Chinese steamed bun) 小笼包. It totalled up to 18,000 (approx. RM 63). The siew mai was still okay taste wise, but the portion was so small compared to the price I had to pay. The char siew bao was the worse...the dough was very very dry, the pork filling was dry too. There were 3 pieces of it and only 0.5 of a bun was eaten, 2.5 went to waste (it was that bad). The best would be the xiao long bao. It taste decent and the soup inside was delicious. The ginger and vinegar + soy sauce dipping made it taste even better.
It wasn't a very successful food tour at Incheon Chinatown. I still like the one at Daelim. At least they have decent 油条 and Mala steamboat (麻辣火锅). That is pretty much all I can share about Incheon Chinatown.
On a side note, anybody who likes to eat fried tofu sushi 유부초밥? I tried making one on my own at home. So this is the stuffing-type of sushi where the fried tofu is cut up into small little pockets where you can stuff rice filling inside. The fried tofu and the dry+wet ingredients to mix with the sushi rice is sold in a packet. Half packet of the fried tofu can make around 7 huge sushi. Instead of only mixing the rice and the dry+wet ingredients, I added some fried cubed spam and seaweed. It taste so nice! You don't have to dip it in soy sauce because the fried tofu is already marinated in soy sauce.
I made seaweed soup to eat with the sushi. It was a decent and warm meal. I would definitely recommend this to anybody who do not really cook at home and wants something that can be prepped fast and easy. The only thing you have to do is probably stuff the rice in the fried tofu pockets.
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