Jewel in the Palace (Dae Jang Geum Restaurant)
It has been a loooong week for me, 3 weeks on the job and I had my first major presentation with the VP for the Asia Pacific Region and sumabay pa WHQ Finance Director for Asia Pacific and Rest of the World! grabeeee!
I almost forgot to re-schedule my flight for my annual leave kamote ^_^
But in the end it has been a rewarding experience won’t put the details much on their compliments basta the good Lord never fails to answer my prayers, praise HIM J
Work done. The fun part come in..so we had to accompany the finance boss for dinner and we went to Dae Jang Geum Restaurant.
This is the only restaurant that was able to sign a contract with some Ministry or Network of sort to use the Dae Jang Geum logo and photos, so rest assured that it offers only the most authentic of Korean ROYAL cuisine which is mainly what was real Jewel in the Palace, Dae Jang Geum have cooked.
Di ako prepared di ko nacharge N70 ko for pics, I have no idea then how special the place would be, so describe ko na lang..
They have this life-size picture of an old lady who was finally given commendation for her research to put back to life the Korean Royal cuisine which the history as we most know was made into the very famous jewel in the palace Korean telenovela. The old lady’s research started way, way back even before they filmed/taped the telenovela.
It was generations ago, that this old lady find the “book” or some documentation of sort on the recipes for the royal court and have started to develop the recipes into what it really was, when she had perfected it she passed it on to her next generation and it went on in her family, matagal din before sya na recognize ng government in 1971 na, probably about the same time that Korea started to modernized and my good officemate was kind enough to tell the story of each recipe.
We had a 17 course meal and I was told we got the shortest list! super sarap pala talaga, Course by course, I was treated like a queen. One dish even have 7 mini-plates in it!
The waitresses wore the costume in that era, like what was worn by the cooks in the telenovela.
I was able to taste fresh ginseng so its really healthy and one is a really good fermented kimchi. Reward talaga for all the aches and pains on putting those presentation together.
In the episode where the King got sick and where he was given this “milky soup” heaven as in.
The Korean barbeque grabe ang saraap ng flavour and very, very tender that’s how real aunthentic Korean BBQ fit for a royal would be.
Another favourite was the Nine Dish Platter or
Korea ’s own wrap-it-yourself mini popiah. It’s tasty and you get to choose your own combination for the fillings.
Moving on, the Dae Jang Geum Set that we had is around KRW 100,000 won or US$ 100 very expensive but once the food got served and tasted you will forgot everything else.
The 17 exquisite dishes are the result of hours of meticulous preparation with nourishing herbs thrown in. Some of the dishes that we had were prepared by more than 10 people, ang dami mga cook sa jewel in the palace diba? and the bean curd pie could take days to prepare.
They were also elegantly presented on uniquely-shaped designer plates that I was told had cost around 200,000 won each. Wow!
Si Bossing grabe ang dami nya talaga nakain cause ang doubel order sa iba na masasarap talaga.. di na sya makalakad when we went to the Korean traditional night market afterwards …hehehe. Traditional market because it sells products related to Korean old customs, very interesting place.
