Korea

After a bit of searching for Korean restaurants Pepero in Matthews, NC was the place I settled on for this weeks passport stamp.  It’s not much to look at. When you walk in, to the right is the restaurant area and to the left is a Korean market.  The fact there was a market was one of the deciding factors in picking Pepero.  There are two seating areas side by side, one apparently the original and the other a more recent addition to accommodate more folks.  I was seated in the older section which just reinforced the “it ain’t fancy” vibe but it was very clean and my table had recently been bused and you could smell the cleaner.  Points for that.

There were only a few people there when I arrived but it quickly filled up and honestly I was heartened to see and hear the majority were Korean.  If they were choosing to eat here I figured that was a good sign the food was authentic.  There were some interesting choices on the menu but I settled on the Seafood Pancake from the appetizer section and the “Bul go gi dup bop”, Korean BBQ beef and rice.  As you can see from the shot below it came with several sides.

I’m not sure what all was in the seafood pancake but I did detect shrimp and squid.  It was good and the pancake texture reminded me of a potato pancake.  The beef was thinly sliced and chopped and was marinated in a slightly sweet sauce and had green onions and sesame seeds sprinkled on it and the rice was chopstick friendly sticky rice.  The sides were kimchi, some kind of greens, pickled cucumber with some mild spicy sauce, bean sprouts and what I think was tofu, at least it had that consistency.  The vagaries of restaurant in a market lighting didn’t do the food justice in these pictures.  Up close and personal it was quite appetizing.  Oh there was soup at the beginning also.  This was a lot of food and against my normal nature I brought food home.  One reason I had to leave a little room was I knew this was available just outside in the market and I had to try it.

If you can’t read the package it is an ice cream sandwich in the shape of a fish with vanilla ice cream and red bean paste.  The “cookie” was the same material they use to make the cheap ice cream cones you get in the store.  Normally I hate those things (waffle cones rule!) but in this case it was great, easy to hold, no leakage and did I mention shaped like a fish.  Who wouldn’t want to try that?  For those going “red bean paste, are you serious?” it was tasty but never fear they did have versions with strawberry and chocolate.

I had to stop in the market and just wander around looking at all the things I had no idea what the hell they were.  I did see Korean Spam which made me smile and more varieties of seaweed than I thought possible.  I did buy a couple of other things I’m going to try later.  Some because they shared the name with the restaurant and they had chocolate.  The other was because it is a sweet potato cookie, how could I not.

Overall verdict is this place is worth going back to visit.  If you want good Korean and plenty of it I’d recommend it.  They don’t have a web site but you can Google them.  Pepero in Matthews, NC.

Next week it’s a road trip to Columbia for Lebanese at Arabesque with friends.

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