Category Archives: Blog

The prospect of eating a tongue may be very unusual to many Americans. However, beef tongue is not uncommon among the usual spread of Korean meat dishes. You can try it out for yourself at the Old Village Seattle Korean restaurant, where we think you’ll find it to be a tender and delicious barbecue treat.

Beef tongue bears a lot of the same nutritional value as the more conventional cuts of beef. It has the usual high level of cholesterol, but it also features a rich supply of important nutrients like protein, vitamin B12, selenium, phosphorus, iron, and zinc. Enjoyed in moderation, it can lend a valuable hand in building lean muscles, healthy blood, valuable enzymes and an overall more robust body.

Korea loves its powerful flavors, and a strong player in the flavor field is garlic. This is why garlic appears in so many of the dishes served at the Old Village Korean Restaurant in Seattle. It gives a little extra kick to the entrees, a little extra taste to the kimchi, and, most importantly, it gives your body that little extra advantage it needs to stay happy and healthy long after you’ve finished your meal.

Indeed, garlic is an extremely healthy substance. Though many of the properties that were attributed to it in ancient times have been discredited, scientific evidence has shown that it may help lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and act as a powerful antioxidant. Additionally, garlic can also serve as a natural, broad-spectrum antibiotic, and one that doesn’t appear to allow bacteria to develop a resistance to. This means that garlic can continue to defend your body against disease, even when pharmaceutical substances begin to fail!

Looking for a good, healthy dish at our Seattle Korean restaurant? You can’t go wrong with a bowl of buckwheat noodles. Our “buckwheat cold noodle” and “buckwheat spicy cold noodle” dishes are made from what the Koreans call “neng myun”. These noodles are similar to the Japanese “soba”, and are served cold to give them a solid, chewy quality that many pasta enthusiasts find irresistible. And, as they’re made from buckwheat, they offer amazing benefits to your health.

The value of buckwheat cannot be understated. This grain is rich in fiber, iron, protein, phosphorus, copper, and vitamins B1, B2, and P. Unique among grains, it even contains the essential bioflavonoid rutin, which is important to strengthen capillaries and battle free radicals. Buckwheat also contains choline, which regulates your blood pressure, metabolism, and liver function. It’s no wonder that the grain has been famous for its medicinal properties for as far back as ancient times.

Gochujang is one of the most important parts of the food at our Seattle Korean restaurant. It is a popular Korean seasoning, both in the country and abroad, and its strong, spicy flavor can be attributed to much of the taste that makes Korean cuisine so distinctly satisfying. And as an added bonus, it’s also incredibly healthy.

In English, gochujang is commonly referred to as red pepper paste. It is made from South American red peppers mixed with sugar, soy, fermented rice, and an assortment of spices. All together, this paste is a valuable part of the healthy Korean diet. It promotes good metabolism and weight loss, it protects the skin from aging, it boosts the immune system with vitamin C, and it relaxes the body. Some substances in the paste can even be linked to Korea’s low rate of certain cancers.

You can find gochujang in many of our dishes, be it mixed into a stew, offered as a dipping sauce, or simply giving your kimchi that famous red color. Pick one out and embrace this valuable seasoning into your life today!

People all over the world have been eating seaweed for thousands of years. It’s an abundant food source, highly nourishing, and a crucial part of many ethnic culinary traditions to this day. At Old Village Korean Restaurant in Seattle, you can enjoy seaweed’s many benefits in our seaweed salad, which is rich in many of the nutrients that are necessary to a well-functioning body.

The particular seaweed used in much of Korean’s cooking is known in the west by its Japanese name, nori. This is the kind of seaweed used in many Japanese restaurants, dried out in thin ribbons to hold pieces of sushi together. Koreans use the plant in many similar ways. Korean seaweed soup has enjoyed a long reputation for being good for your blood, a claim that can now be backed up with nori’s high iron, potassium, and magnesium levels. It’s also a good source of protein, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin B2, and iodine, lending itself nicely to the healthy upkeep of your skin, throat, immune system, and other important functions.

If you’re looking for a good, meatless source of protein and iron, or you simply want to partake of the amazing benefits of nori, come on down to Old Village today and order a bowl of seaweed salad!

At our Seattle Korean restaurant, we have a long list of menu items that feature the traditional Korean soybean paste, doenjang. This paste is very much like the Japanese miso. The trained palate would notice a few differences between the two; doenjang features a thicker and richer taste, for example, containing actual chunks of the soybeans mixed into the paste. The two are the same where it is most important, however, in that they both share the incredible health benefits of fermented soy.

Though soy products have been widely criticized in recent years, it’s become more and more clear that the real champion of your health is soy in its fermented forms. While unfermented soy is difficult for the body to digest, the fermentation process breaks up complex sugars and protein enzyme inhibitors to make the soy’s valuable nutrients more available to the body. The health benefits of such foods are many, and include the inhibition of certain cancers, the reduction of inflammation, increased bone durability, improved metabolism, and lower cholesterol.

If you’d like to experience the many benefits of doenjang, order up a bowl of soy paste soup at Old Village! You’d be hard pressed to find a more delicious way to do your body a favor.

Did you know that you can tell a country by its chopsticks? Indeed, even something as apparently simple as a pair of slender eating utensils can bear the signature of its nation of origin. Try keeping a sharp eye out the next time you go out to eat, and you’ll notice that the sticks at our Seattle Korean restaurant are different from those of other venues.

The oldest variety of chopstick comes from China. Here the chopstick is cut in more of a square shape than in other countries, and the tip is broader and blunter. This original shape is thought to be as old as five thousand years, and is preserved to this day by the Chinese.

In Japan, it’s more common to see rounded chopsticks. The tip also tends to be thinner than those of the Chinese.

The favored chopstick in Korea is made out of stainless steel. These sticks are crafted into a flattened, rectangular shape and decorated with ornate engravings along the broad sides.

Are you entertaining friends from overseas?  Old Village Korean Restaurant in Seattle should make any of your South Korean visitors feel right at home.  For your own part, though, you may want to familiarize yourself with a few Korean dining customs in order to properly impress your party.  Take a quick look at these simple pointers, and you’ll knock the socks off of your foreign friends.

• The number one rule to remember is to show respect for your elders.  At the dinner table, this means that the eldest person sits first, the eldest person starts eating first, and nobody leaves until the eldest person is done.  Of course, this also means that the eldest person is expected to pay; younger diners will generally show their thanks by picking up a lesser bill for dessert or coffee later on in the evening.

• In much of Asia, it is customary not to fill your own glass while drinking socially.  Always wait for somebody else to fill you up, and be ready to refill your neighbor if you need to.

• In Korea, food is eaten in a certain order.  Taste your soup first, and then move on to the rice and other foods.

• When you are finished eating, put your food and utensils back in their original positions.  Do not leave your chopsticks standing up in food, as this is offensive in many Asian countries.  Check that your spoon is clean, as it is considered rude to leave food stuck on your spoon.

If you’re an oyster lover, we’ve got good news for you. First, you can order up a batch of oysters, fried the Korean way, at our Seattle Korean restaurant. Second, you don’t have to feel guilty about indulging in your favorite shellfish; like much of what we fish out of the ocean, oysters are quite beneficial to your health!

Not only are oysters a good, low fat, low cholesterol source of protein, they’re also a rich source of zinc. Though it may not get as much attention as many other vital nutrients, zinc is an important part of every cell in your body. Zinc is used to repair DNA strands, provide energy to the body, and battle infections. For men, it’s used in the production of testosterone, which contributes to oysters’ reputation as an aphrodisiac. A deficiency of zinc is attributed to many problems, like a decreased ability to heal wounds, low energy, and faulty growth.

Make sure you’re getting enough zinc in your diet the fun way, and come down for a plate of oysters at Old Village!

Do you know how to use chopsticks? You’re perfectly welcome to use a fork at our Seattle Korean restaurant, but if you want to really dive into the Asian dining experience, you should try to develop a mastery of Korea’s favorite utensils.

To hold the chopsticks, pick up one like a pencil and place the second one beneath it, resting on your middle finger and thumb. Try to hold them at an angle; if you try to grip food with the sticks parallel to each other, it is more likely to slip before it reaches your mouth. It may be frustrating at first, but it only takes a little practice before you develop the proper dexterity to eat like a pro.

If you ever find yourself dining in Asia, be sure to exercise proper chopstick etiquette. Do not spear food with your sticks. When putting your sticks down, do not leave them standing up in your rice; this is a tradition reserved for funeral celebrations, and could be considered rude in other occasions. Instead, place your sticks back where you found them when you’re finished eating.