I Am Ssam

Today we ate delicious Ssambap, a dish of spicy, almost sweet tasting pork served with a dazzling array of side dishes. A friend put me onto this restaurant a couple of weeks back and I've been back three times since.

It's usual to eat the ssambap by placing some of the spicy meat and any variant of the side dishes into one of several different kinds of lettuce leaf on offer. Then wrap it all up and throw it in your mouth - simple and delicious.
I love the meat at this place so much though, and unusually they serve three different kinds of rice, so I tend to bypass the lettuce leaves and eat the meat and rice together and the side dishes seperately.
The sides also differ a bit from other resturants I've visited. My favourites are the quails eggs with chillies, the fried tofu, the stewed aubergine with garlic and sesame oil, and the white kimchi (a non-spicy version of Korea's popular fermented cabbage).
These can all be washed down with a kimchi soup and all the barley tea you can drink.

I'm not usually a big fan of the ssambap, the side dishes are usually mostly green-vegetable based which isn't really my bag. This place has it spot on though, and coupled with the small, old, traditional house ambiance it has - it's one of my go to Gawangju eateries.