Having A Dinner With My Old Friend

I met my friend who was a priest in Catholic Church.
It was a high school when we met first.
At that time I never ever had thought him to be a priest.

One day I heard he entered into the seminary. I couldn’t believe that.
During the military service, he made up his mind to be a priest.
Strange thing was that he never’ve been the Church before the military service.
As I several times have told, the military service is compulsory obligation for all young men.

He was an urchin in high school. We had played together. Some times we had escaped from school. In the deep corner, some of urchins had drunk and smoked.

The principle was very strict in Korean high school. But we had enjoyed that freedom once upon a time.
More than 40 years he have met as a friend.

After my retirement, we met that day as usual.
We had talked our further life and went to the restaurant to eat something.

He guided me to the restaurant. The restaurant was located in the corner of the back alley in Myeong Dong. Myeong Dong is the very center of Seoul City.

Once Myeong Dong had been a center of poor writer and painter for decades ago.
Now Myeong Dong was changing rapidly for business and consuming.

But until now, there exist some restaurants where poor artists had eased their empty stomach.

The restaurant where my priest friend guided me was that place for the poor artists.

We ordered Seol Leong Tang.
Seol Leong Tang was actually very high standard food. This menu was closely related to King in Choson Dynasty.

As I had posted, Choson Dynasty was on the basis of agriculture. So King had to cultivate the rice by himself to show to people how he thought the agriculture important, even though it was a ceremony.

After the ceremony of cultivation, King and his officials had had a food. It was the Seol Leong Tang.

It looks simple. But it is not easy. There need an enough experience to make Seol Leong Tang.
The essence is making a soup. They need to boil the beef proper time. The proper time and fire is the secret.

Once they found the secret, the restaurant could continue for long time.
The restaurant where we dropped by have 50 years history in one place.

Look below is Seol Leong Tang.

Kimchis very important in Seol Leong Tang.

At first, you need to put the rice into the Seol Leong Tang.

Secondly, You need put Kimchi soup into it.

You need to have delicate feeling of taste for Seol Leong Tang.

This was a super. I ate it up to the bottom.

It is always the best dinner when we have it with a good friend.