Health Code Violations

One thing that's interesting here, is how different our cultures are. For example, here, at just about every resturant (not fast food), when they place the bowls out, they give each person a wet washcloth and you're supposed to wash your hands before you eat. It makes sense, and seems cleaner than the US, where you should wash your hands, but let's face it, the extra trip to the bathroom isn't worth it.

But then there is silverware (chopsticks and spoons) in a box at the end of the table. And everyone shares food. Although if you washed your hands, it'd be all good.

The weirdest part to me is the cooking your own food part. I don't mind it at all - it's almost like fondue and is part of the culture here. It encourages people to talk while they eat, which is why dinners sometime last for hours. Other than fondue, I don't know any place in the US where they would let you cook food yourself for fear of being sued. It sometimes makes me double take when they just drop a platter of pork off at your table and trust you to cook it and don't really check on you. There would be all kinds of signs posted and regulations and people watching you like a hawk in the States. I don't think anybody has even thought about that here; they don't have a sue everyone for anything type culture, and that's nice (even from a lawyer's perspective).

As usual, I went to dinner or lunch a few times in the last couple of weeks. I tried a new place with the girls. It's a Vietnamese/Korean place and does spring rolls and shabu shabu. First, they bring you a platter of veggies and some meat. They also bring you really thin rice paper discs that look almost like taco shells and bowls of hot water. You dip the disc into the hot water to soften it, then put the cooked meat (we had duck which was awesome), veggies and sauce into the disc, then wrap it. There is a video playing on small TVs around the restaurant showing you how to dip and fold your spring roll. Mine never quite looked right, but they tasted really good. Then, we used the leftover veggies and made a soup with additional cabbage and mushrooms. After the soup, they make noodles and rice porridge. It was really good and I think we'll go there again sometime.

Rice paper wrappers and bowl of hot water

Veggies, plus our plate and water glass

More veggies. I ate the pineapple, but didn't put it in my spring roll. All the others went in though.

One of the other places we went (same girls) was the pajon place. I showed pictures of the food before (here), but I never got a really good picture of the outside or inside, which are interesting to me. The outside looks like a hole in the wall and the inside looks like a hobbit house. I still didn't get good pictures because there were a lot of people and they all were watching us, but here's what I got.

Anna walking inside. If you didn't know this place was a restaurant, you'd walk past it thinking it was a shack.

Inside. See the guy looking directly at me? I wasn't even holding the camera up, it was supposed to be ninja-like.