Thursday, January 11, 2007
Outback Steakhouse!!
Proven fact: You will never truly know just how good a steak tastes until you've gone 6 months without one!! The reality that a piece of meat could be bigger then a mini-Snickers had pretty much left our minds. In light of that fact, we (Tim, Sam, Mel, and I) decided to take the subway ride into Suwon for a little "Outback Steakhouse" experience.
Koreans know how to make an Outback experience quite enjoyable. Yes, the wait was about 45 minutes. However, while we were waiting for our table, we were treated to free appetizer samples. A waitress came around and gave us mini chicken drumsticks to enjoy before our meal. The guys were especially hungry! The waitress gave us two little bowls with 2 drumsticks in each...one for each of us. Sam was sitting beside a Korean family who also received a little bowl of drumsticks. Just as the waitress put the bowl into their hands, their "reservation light disk thingy" (that's the technical name) went off. The mom stood up, put their bowl of chicken down on the ledge behind the bench, and walked about 6 feet to the hostess' pulpit. As soon as Tim saw the woman abandon her chicken, he leaned over and whispered, "Sam, she left her chicken...grab it!!". Sam reached over, took the chicken, and was just about to celebrate our great luck, when the woman turned around and started heading back for her chicken bowl. Awkward!! She looked shocked to see Sam holding her chicken, and Sam looked like he wanted the floor to open up and eat him alive! He quickly put her chicken down, she walked over, picked up the chicken, and pretended like nothing had happened. I'm sure her thought pattern was something like, "Crazy, no-good foreigners...coming in here and stealing my free chicken....". ("In my defense, she shouldn't have left it" - Sam...he wanted me to add that when he read this portion of the story)
Anyways, the rest of our meal went a lot smoother! I can honestly say we met the best waiter in Korea. His name was Huni (Hoo-knee), he looked like he was about 16 or 17 (see the picture below). His English wasn't perfect, and so we'd see him hovering around the corner from our table, trying to think of what he was going to say before he walked up. He got really excited over the littlest things. Example:
Huni: You want more bread?
Us: Yes, please.
Huni: More and more! Ya! YAAAA!
He brought us tons of bread with various dipping sauces. He filled our drinks, he frequently made sure we didn't need anything. The amazing thing is that there's no such thing as "tipping" in Korea, and so we knew he was genuinely awesome, and not just trying to score a larger percentage of the meal price for himself. At the end of our meal he walked up and asked: "You enjoy with me" (English teacher translation: Did you enjoy your evening with me as your server?). We ended up writing him a little thank you note so he'd know how much we defnitely "enjoyed with him".
We've decided to not let another 6 months go by before we head back.
Sam, Huni, and Tim. Huni looked a little scared when Sam and Tim stood up and he realized how much bigger they were then him.
Sam and I with our salad bowls. Our first salad in Korea that didn't come with either Mayonaisse & Ketchup, or peanut sauce as a dressing (Koreans can do food, but they can't do salads!!) (Sorry about the weird lighting...this was taken on Mel's phone camera cause we forgot ours)
Koreans know how to make an Outback experience quite enjoyable. Yes, the wait was about 45 minutes. However, while we were waiting for our table, we were treated to free appetizer samples. A waitress came around and gave us mini chicken drumsticks to enjoy before our meal. The guys were especially hungry! The waitress gave us two little bowls with 2 drumsticks in each...one for each of us. Sam was sitting beside a Korean family who also received a little bowl of drumsticks. Just as the waitress put the bowl into their hands, their "reservation light disk thingy" (that's the technical name) went off. The mom stood up, put their bowl of chicken down on the ledge behind the bench, and walked about 6 feet to the hostess' pulpit. As soon as Tim saw the woman abandon her chicken, he leaned over and whispered, "Sam, she left her chicken...grab it!!". Sam reached over, took the chicken, and was just about to celebrate our great luck, when the woman turned around and started heading back for her chicken bowl. Awkward!! She looked shocked to see Sam holding her chicken, and Sam looked like he wanted the floor to open up and eat him alive! He quickly put her chicken down, she walked over, picked up the chicken, and pretended like nothing had happened. I'm sure her thought pattern was something like, "Crazy, no-good foreigners...coming in here and stealing my free chicken....". ("In my defense, she shouldn't have left it" - Sam...he wanted me to add that when he read this portion of the story)
Anyways, the rest of our meal went a lot smoother! I can honestly say we met the best waiter in Korea. His name was Huni (Hoo-knee), he looked like he was about 16 or 17 (see the picture below). His English wasn't perfect, and so we'd see him hovering around the corner from our table, trying to think of what he was going to say before he walked up. He got really excited over the littlest things. Example:
Huni: You want more bread?
Us: Yes, please.
Huni: More and more! Ya! YAAAA!
He brought us tons of bread with various dipping sauces. He filled our drinks, he frequently made sure we didn't need anything. The amazing thing is that there's no such thing as "tipping" in Korea, and so we knew he was genuinely awesome, and not just trying to score a larger percentage of the meal price for himself. At the end of our meal he walked up and asked: "You enjoy with me" (English teacher translation: Did you enjoy your evening with me as your server?). We ended up writing him a little thank you note so he'd know how much we defnitely "enjoyed with him".
We've decided to not let another 6 months go by before we head back.
Sam, Huni, and Tim. Huni looked a little scared when Sam and Tim stood up and he realized how much bigger they were then him.
Sam and I with our salad bowls. Our first salad in Korea that didn't come with either Mayonaisse & Ketchup, or peanut sauce as a dressing (Koreans can do food, but they can't do salads!!) (Sorry about the weird lighting...this was taken on Mel's phone camera cause we forgot ours)# posted by Becky @ 9:04 PM 
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Good for you. That poor kid looks so small against the guys. Glad to see you found a little bit of home.
I love Huni!! he's so cute! haha. i laughed so hard a sam 'stealing' the ladies chicken. haha. something like that would only happen to sam. haha. i love that she said nothing and pretended she didn't notice. i would have just ate it. haha.
ooohhhh man.. you guys get yourselfs into the best situations.. i wish we were with you.. Poor sam... oh well... they should know... don't leave free chicken around hungry foreigners!!
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