Soft spots: Kimchi pancake on a rainy night

Business travel takes all the fun out of travel...

Friends recommend eateries in Boston that I should try. In theory it should work. I shall plan my three meals a day around the recommendation list, but going on a culinary adventure during a conference really isn’t the best way to go. I just didn’t have any appetite. Now if I was to go on an extended hiking trip... but I was not.

Eating during a multi-day conference is certainly neither fun nor healthy. For breakfast we were treated with “Continental breakfast”, which really consists of a bunch of ultra-sweet pastries, orange juice, washed down coffee, and fruit trays that came and went like mad. I got my morning sugar fixes and it was enough to get me going for about two hours. When break time came, I stepped out to a hal lway full of the same thing, oh wait, now they had bagels too. I got refills for coffee (having way too much "conference" coffee is the primary reason I despise coffee), scraped remaining fruit pieces onto my plastic plate. Or if I felt extra forgiving to myself for the dinner I missed the night before, I went to get a blueberry muffin too. All the sugar was doing something strange to my body as I felt restless and irritated, secretly wishing the morning sessions would end soon.

By lunch time, I was all filled up with sugar, coffee, and a whole lot of unnecessary carbs with no appetite, but it’s a ritual, and besides what else was I to do in the 90-minute break? So I went off to some fast food place frequented by MIT students on a dash between classes. I got my extra "filling" greasy stuffed pizza, and washed it down with water or coke. And that’s that.

The afternoon sessions ran uneventfully similar to the affair in the morning. By dinner time I was once again full but not satisfied in the least. Traveling alone definitely has its perks, but dining alone in a restaurant is not one of them. I promised myself I would not go back to LA without trying the famous New England clam chowder, and while I was at it, the Lobster Bake as well. Fortunately there is a Legal Seafood next to the conference site. The waiter looked a bit puzzled as he tried to seat me, gasp(!), a lone person in a busy restaurant during dinner time. Finally I was seated in an awkward corner sort of tucked away, not to see or be seen. It suited me fine. I ordered the special, Lobster Bake, and wait for my food as middle-aged people in sizable groups walked by shooting pity-like looks my way. It’s really OK, I wanted to say. This particularly nice group next to my table, a family on vacation, was very concerned with my well being in dining alone. They tried to strike up a conversation and keep it flowing the whole time I was working on the Lobster. It was very nice of them, but it took considerable amounts of energy to bounce the ball back and forth. Sometimes a girl just wants to work on a challenging but delicious lobster in her own quiet time...

Ah, the only relief came as I reunited with a high school classmate whom I haven’t seen in eight years. We walked in drizzling rain to this Korean restaurant around the corner, which was not on the recommendation list. No matter. We had a lot of catching up to do, and all was done over a meal with laughter and tears. I had my best meal in days, kimchi pancake the chef specially made for us because “In Korea we always eat kimchi pancake when it rains”, tofu seafood stew and a hearty stone bowl of Bimbimbab with a nice crispy layer of crust stuck to the bottom. We cleaned our plates, even the pickled vegetables. Indeed, what’s better than eating Kimchi pancake with your friend on a rainy night?