Korea Michelin tour day 1: Myeong-dong FAIL

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We're off to Korea for a long-overdue eating trip, studded with Michelin stars thanks to planning being left up to yours truly.  Thanks to the backlog at Hong Kong International Airport created by Typhoon Hato, our flight to Seoul was delayed by more than 2 hours... which meant we ended up checking into The Shilla Seoul just minutes before midnight.

Without a decent dinner in our bellies, we set out to look for some food after midnight on a Friday evening.  My memories of Seoul date back more than a decade ago, when I spent a lot of time walking around Myeong-dong near my hotel.  There was a lot of street food as well as restaurants and shops, and I figured that the place would still be hopping into the wee hours on a Friday.

I couldn't have been more wrong...

When we got off our taxi next to one of the entrances to the Myeong-dong MRT station, the scene wasn't at all what I had expected. The area was dark, and the streets were pretty empty.  We ended up walking around most of Myeong-dong and only found 2 stalls on the street.  There were some restaurants still open, and eventually we settled on Oppadak (오빠닭) in a row of restaurants, based on the number of patrons...  We figured some chicken at this hour wouldn't be a bad idea, even if it's baked and not Korean fried chicken.

Garlic chicken thighs - very tender and tasty thanks to the soy glaze.  There wasn't as much of the garlic chips as I had expected, but I was still happy with it.

Sweet chili chicken wings - the seasoning here is better, and as Hello Kitty says, the skin to meat ratio is better.

We finished around 2 a.m. and found ourselves having a tough time getting a taxi around Myeong-dong.  At this hour many taxis don't take short fares, and eventually we decided to just get into a taxi first before telling the driver our destination.

Not a very successful start to our trip, but hey, things can only get better from here!