Day 72 – Onigiri, Lamian, and Soju

If you know what all of those things are, you’ll know I’ve had a bit of a culinary tour around Asia today!

I had a lovely evening planned – first a trip to the Palmengarten to view an orchid exhibition, and then a walk through Frankfurt to view different light exhibitions at the Luminale. Unfortunately due to the Coronavirus and the government’s advisement to cancel any event with over 1000 attendees, everything ended up getting cancelled at the last minute. Understandable of course, but I can imagine hugely frustrating the people who have worked hard on the event for a long time.

As a result of the last-minute change, I went to a fail-safe-new-thing backup – food. I’m very lucky to live in a place with so many culinary options that even though I’m already an adventurous eater, I know there will always be something new to try.

I was walking around the Bahnhofsviertel in Frankfurt, a bit of a seedy area but with some amazing hidden restaurants, where I found Aunty Zhong’s. Aunty Zhong’s is a Chinese noodle bar, in a bright and open space, specialising in homemade dumplings and noodles. Overwhelmed by choice, I asked the very friendly staff for a recommendation and they suggested a beef belly and noodle soup. The noodles here are called lamian and are hand-pulled into long thick strands.

Oh my word this dish was delicious. I’ve only ever had Japanese-style noodle soups such as ramen, and this wasn’t dissimilar in taste, but these homemade-noodles were spectacular. The portion was so huge that I managed to bring at least half back for my very happy husband.

In the meantime, he had also been busy finding me a new thing and had come back with an onigiri to try – a Japanese rice snack wrapped in seaweed.

Again, this was so tasty, I actually wish he’d bought more as I’d quite happily devour another one. This will definitely not be my last onigiri.

After my culinary visit to China, then Japan, my next and final stop was Korea. We’d acquired a bottle of soju (one of the most popular alcoholic drinks in Korea) a few weeks ago but never tried it. Tonight was the night.

We drank it neat as instructed to by Google, and although not unpleasant, it didn’t really taste of anything at all. I’m not sure if I’m missing something with this…

So after plans got cancelled, I did what lots of us would do and turned to food which turned into a delicious culinary adventure through Asia. I’ll definitely have the noodles and onigiri again, but I’ll maybe leave the soju.