Don Quixote

As the final festivity for Judy's birthday, we got dressed up again and headed out to dinner and the Universal Ballet's performance of Marius Petipa's Don Quixote.  For dinner, we decided to try Jayeonsan Hoe, an all-you-can-eat (in 40 minutes) sushi buffet we'd read about that was only a few subway stops from the theater. 

Before hittin' the road

자연산 회

Jayeonsan Hoe Timed Sushi Buffet

We'd never heard of a timed buffet before coming to Korea, and then we've only ever heard of them associated with sushi buffets.  It makes sense with the cost of quality sushi (we hope it was quality!), but it's still a strange concept.  When you walk into the place, they seat you and immediately stamp your bill with the time you were seated, and place it on the counter so the sushi chefs behind the bar and the staff walking around the restaurant can easily check when you're time is up.  There's no free fish here!  Even when we ordered sake, the waiter checked the time before agreeing to serve it to us!

Tuna & Salmon

(and 9 empty plates)

The sushi was actually quite good too!  Especially for it being an all-you-can-eat joint.  We were more than pleasantly surprised.  It was also nice to be able to grab anything we wanted from a passing boat just to try and not have to worry about eating it if we didn't want to.  The downfall to all-you-can-eat sushi is that you actually eat all you can.  Usually the price of sushi limits us to eating a comfortable amount or only slightly too much.  That was not the case here.  The 17,000\ price was fixed, so we grabbed and grabbed and ate and ate for the entire 40 minutes.  There was no need for restraint or self control.  It was way too much food. 

What's embarrassing here is that when this picture was taken, they had already cleared away our empty plates a few times.  This was probably somewhere in the 30's!  And there were more after this point too...

Stuffed!  (and waiting for the subway)

Sesame Street brand and Dennis The Menace brand golf apparel and accessories!  (We'll gladly take orders if there's anything you need!)

Since dinner only took 4o minutes, we were pretty early arriving at the Seoul Arts Center.  Instead of sitting in the lobby and waiting, we decided to go to one of the coffee shops nearby for a little pick-me-up.  (This was our first ballet, so we weren't sure if it was going to be something we could easily stay awake through or not.  Caffeine seemed like the smart idea...)

Coffine Gurunaru

This was our first visit to a CG location.  They are all over Seoul, but that stupid name always deterred us.  On this particular occasion, we didn't decide on one of the other coffee shops we'd passed and this was the last one on the street, so that's what made the decision for us.

The company motto?  Business plan?

"Coffine Gurunaru wants to be a tree and a ferry in a river just like a place to rest.  A good quality coffee and the health benefits of wine will definitely make your body and your mind upgrade and even your pride in your life.  Please take a deserved break at Coffine Gurunaru.  Coffine Gurunaru is a resting place for you."

Pre-show

Seoul Arts Center Opera Theater

Intermission

Back to Coffine!

When we were there before the show, we noticed on the menu that they had a 17,900\ bottle of wine available.  In Korea, that's a great deal on wine, and especially great that it was at a cafe because that meant that we wouldn't have to order food with it.  It seemed too good to be true, so we came back after the show for a little wine, only to find out that it actually was too good to be true...

Waiting for the wine in purple velvet wing backs

After nearly 15 minutes of waiting, our buzzer finally went off, signaling that our wine was ready.  As it turned out, the bottle option on the wine menu was a take-out only option, and it wasn't actually a bottle, or even a half bottle for that matter.*  We were so stoked to have found a place with cheap wine too.  ☹

*A week or so later, we finally opened our Coffine Gurunaru wine, and the bottle only held 2 glasses of wine.  Not even heavily poured glasses either...  The wine at least tasted good.  Not 9,000\/glass good, but definitely better than other wines we've had here. 

Feeling betrayed and defeated, Judy put the 'bottle' into her purse and we headed back towards our neighborhood to drown our sorrows in beer and chicken strips at Baby Guinness, an Irish pub near our house.  

The best chicken strips in town!