u/veggiecheesytteok

MBC have some clips of Nolleo Coaster on their Insta page, so you too can watch CKR hold onto his hat!

I accept that I am a moaning old git these days but I really struggle reading food reviews on websites such as the Infatuation. The nonsensical descriptors and constant verbosity makes them hard to read and impossible to rely on. I'm assuming these reviewers are heavily reliant on AI or an auto-thesaurus to pump reviews full of rubbish.

I also find they hype up incredibly mediocre food and service for no good reason. Are they getting paid to review these places by the restaurants themselves? I don't get it.

If you contrast these reviews with actual food writers like Grace Dent, it's like night and day. I sometimes disagree with her palate but she often sums up the essence of the restaurant experience perfectly. Describing Six by Nico as "fine dining for the Pizza Express generation" was, for example, spot on.

I guess I'm not the target demographic for food "influencers", whatever they are supposed to be, but sometimes I despair of people's lack of common sense and authenticity.

CKR seems to be enjoying his time on MBC variety programme Nolleo Coaster. He's reliving his childhood memories and embracing the fun of theme parks! Love this shot of him with Mario!

Episode 7 of Blank Menu sees CKR making a North Korean specialty dish, Pyongyang naengmyeon. That's ice cold noodles in broth with added ice. The request from American singer-songwriter John Park is a little odd: he wants a dish to forget his first love.

What is that first love? Why, it's Pyongyang nangmyeon! CKR makes him the exact dish that he's trying to forget. Much hilarity in this episode from the very beginning as Sang Hoon is so relieved he doesn't have to do as much prep work as usual to begin with!

The broth is simmered for a long time with numerous veggies and meat, then strained by Sang Hoon (a less challenging task than normal).

I know very little about John Park but he seems like a nice guy! He's obviously a big foodie and has starred in The Genius Paik variety show before (everyone will know Mr Paik from Culinary Class Wars and his mega-bites!).

As it's summer and the weather is heating up, these cold noodles sound pretty good to me!

Looks like everyone's favourite Jorim-ping will be touring around amusement parks for his next reality TV show. Korean news says they'll be visiting unusual amusement parks, which piques my interest. Will he be snacking along the way and commenting on the delicacies in the theme parks too I wonder?

A new MBC variety program featuring Ko Kyung-pyo, Ro Hong-chul, and Choi Kang-rok is scheduled to air in June, according to Korean news sites. For any K-drama fans out there, Ko Kyung-pyo was most recently in Undercover Miss Hong, which was a surprise hit. It's a great drama set in the 90s in which the main Miss Hong goes undercover in a corrupt financial services firm, which she takes down from the inside with a little help from her friends.

Should be interesting to see what the new variety show is about - hopefully some cooking or food will feature from CKR!

We went to the Canary Wharf branch for a friend's birthday and not only was the service abysmal, the food was extremely disappointing. Now, I know it's a low budget tasting menu experience, so my expectations should have been waaaaaaay lower. However, it isn't technically a cheap meal if you add in drinks.

It definitely wasn't my choice to go there and I was the only one on the table with the vegetarian menu (vs the meat and fish option), but I don't think any of us were particularly impressed. They seemed to be lacking some ingredients, so swapped out things and plain left things off some of the dishes (I had to ask where my mushrooms were, for example - they had run out). We weren't eating particularly late in the evening, so I dread to think what the other diners that came after us were served.

I feel like they try too hard to come up with inventive briefs rather than actually making delicious food. They seem to be poor at planning, given the running out of the ingredients. Plus they really need to focus more on customer service. I shall be giving it a miss in future for sure.

I haven't watched it yet but the new show with CKR has "cozy vibes" according to rapper Defcon. CKR and his fellow chef chat about farting, of all things, which makes me laugh.

Anyone watch it? Was it good?

For anyone that is missing Blank Menu, it's always worth watching K-foodie meets J-foodie on Netflix in the meantime - there's four whole seasons and the food journeys around Korea and Japan are epic! I love the chemistry between the two guys too. Definitely worth a look.