San Soo Kab San

If you're like me, you've heard all kinds of stories about Korean BBQ and "OOOOH, look how many cute little dishes you get" and "OOOOOOH I can't believe all these little guys are free!" and "OOOOOOH I get to cook it myself on this cute little grill" and "OOOOH what is this weird vegetably thing?"

Yes, these are natural reactions to Korean BBQ from an American after eating there for the first time - so if you ever see them on a review, please disregard it. It's a very different style of dining from what we are typically used to in this neck of the woods - but after going a few times, it becomes all part of the norm, and although the appeal will never wear off, it's just another perk of the many perks of Korean cuisine.

San Soo Kab San is the only Korean BBQ place I've been to in the Chicagoland area, but after eating at many establishments in LA and New York, I can say that it does rank up there. It's definitely a no-frills place, but what it lacks in style and presentation, it makes up in taste and -how should I put this - memorability.

After a recent "facelift," a lot of the restaurant looks different and, well, orange. A very memorable paint job added to its appeal, but unfortunately they didn't go as far as to replace the desparately-in-need-of-replacing oversized vent hoods over every table. We happened to have a functioning one tonight, but the poor family next to us didn't, and with the amount of sauces, spices, and blood sticking to the burners, you're in for a smokey, effervescent evening.

After the 10-12 dishes of appetizers came to our table and we began to scarf them down, our Bulgogi arrived. It was a busy night tonight and we didn't want to wait extra long for the skilled hands in the rear of the kitchen to cook our meat, so we instructed them to bring it out raw and we cooked on the grill at our table. Our raw marinated beef plate came out, heaping with meat. This is possibly the biggest appeal of San Soo Kab San over the restaurants in NY and LA - you get A LOT. And Korean BBQ is never cheap, and it's always so tasty you never want to stop eating it, so it's good when you get a lot. After we started eating the beef, our bibimbap arrived in its hot stone pot. Bibimbap is basically rice with many small vegetables on top with a raw egg. After a quick dash of red sauce, you mix it all up until its nice and gooey and crispy all at the same time. This goes perfectly with some grilled meats, and soon the meal is really flowing with arms going everywhere, each taking their own from a family-style setting, different dishes being passed, and so on. While I expect there are better Korean restaurants in the US, and while I ask anyone to let me know if I'm wrong, I firmly believe that San Soo Kab San, at 5247 N. Western, could very easily be the strongest Korean BBQ Chicago has to offer. If you're looking for a place to go and have a GREAT time, eat and drink well, get a little pissed at the waitstaff, and come out smelling something awful, San Soo Kab San is the place for you.

A bit of Food...

Mrs. Architecturefootballandfood and I went to the famous "Walnut Room" for Brunch on Sunday. Was actually kind of a fluke, as we had hoped to catch the cafeteria at Macy's Seventh Floor open. We've heard they've got a fantastic bowl of Ramen there, but alas, they're closed on Sunday. Mostly not too surprised to see that, really... So instead, we stopped over to the famous, old, beautiful room and were indeed surprised to see how reasonably priced the brunch was, so figured "what the heck?"

We ended up getting the salmon ceasar salad and the Smoked Salmon. The ceasar was fairly typical but very, very fresh, crisp and tasty. Cant go wrong with a ceasar, but this was defo above par. My smoked salmon came on a toasted bagel with lettuce, tomato, capers, and a fantastic cream cheese spread which was really soft and creamy. The bagel was toasted only on the inside so that the outside was very chewy and soft, but when you bit into the sandwich it gave a really lovely crunching sound that felt good eating, as well. I'd HIGHLY recommend the smoked salmon, and the Walnut Room on any Sunday for a fantastic brunch in a beautiful old place that's usually packed - but apparently not on Sundays!

Finally, I want to share a link with everybody that I found the other day:

http://www.greasefreak.com/
It's a fantastic website listing multiple Chicago staples on the food pyramid, with only a name, a photo, and a few ratings. No endless commentary on greasefreak (like you'll find on Architecture, Football and Food) - none needed. The stark, simple design, enormous catalogue of restaurants and down-to-bones information given is perfect for the viewer to make their own decisions. It's a fantastic tool when trying to find a new Chicago dive to stuff your pie hole in.

Early Depression and Bathroom Update

Well, Newcastle had their second pre-season friendly this weekend and I must say, I'm not too surprised to already see a shocking loss posted on the board. We traveled to newly promoted Championship side Doncaster with basically a second-string squad. Some sad news saw my man Obafemi Martins travel back to Africa for the funeral of his mother, who tragically died in a fire. She was an enormous impact on his life, and his brother had said he was the closest to her in the whole family. Michael Owen was fighting a case of the mumps apparently, a bunch of others have "knocks" and, h yeah - Joey Barton is still in jail. With all of our strikers out, we had to start with Ameobi and Smith up front and the proved just how inept they are, missing chance after chance. They had plenty of chances to be fair, and still couldn't get one past a side who's last match was played in League fricking One.

Good news was, though, Guthrie played well again, And SebastienBassong, the U-21 French International trialist had a great run-out and looked a nice backup to our thin defensive line. Hopefully we will tie this kid up in the coming days and have a bit of depth for the future.

So, with our team so so thin, hopefully this will shock Mike Ashley into action to sign some new, quality players - not just shock buys like we're so used to. We certainly got the structure in place to do it - we just need our owner to foot the bill. Come on Mike.

And back to the ongoing saga of the bathroom reno! Well, we've once again changed the design. The more we started thinking about our place, our life, and our future, we still think there may be a chance that we'll move out somewhere, maybe to the Gold Coast area, maybe to Lincoln Park, maybe to Evanston, who knows. We love it here for now, but only time will tell where our heads will be in 2030. So we decided to let go of the Japanese bath sticking out into the bedroom with a large open window idea. Instead we're just going to make a giant bath/shower so we can really fill that sucker up and have a nice soak if wanted. And we're going to use the space which was once designed for a bath as EXTRA STORAGE. We've decided to implement a walk-through closet(same as before) but now, behind both sides of hanging clothes, we'll have a full height cubby wall, holding any longer-term storage we'll ever need - like off-season clothes, athletic equipment, old clothes, books, anything. In a place as small as this, extra storage will be incredibly useful, and if I dare say, we'll probably be able to up the resale value on this bad boy if we advertise STORAGE! STORAGE! STORAGE!!!

So while we'll be losing a little bit of luxury in our bathroom plans, it'll be 90% the same, and we'll be able to really make a killing if we choose to sell the place in the future. But it does mean that we'll have to take two steps back in the drawings........

Here we go again...

It just seems like yesterday I was posting a finale post to the sad, poor, disappointing 07-08 season, putting up pathetic little photos of the Titanic, thinking I was funny (okay, KNOWING, confidently, that I was funny - I mean, like, dead funny) and now guess what - THE NEW SEASON HAS BEGUN!!!

Earlier today, my beloved Newcastle United Football Club played their first preseason game of the, well, erm, preseason, against Hartlepool United at Victoria Park. Hartlepool opened the scoring early with a fairly easy and well played goal and I thought, well, here we go again. The feeling of pain, hurt, disgust, regret, anger, and familiarity all came running back again. "Come on - this is a LEAUGE 1 SIDE" I thought to myself. Just before the half, Damien Duff put in a pretty nice goal to tie it up. The second half saw young Dannie Guthrie come out for his first time in a Newcastle shirt (today's being the sporty new Purple Away kits, as you can see above. I quite like them - wha'dyou guys think?) and make a FANTASTIC impression by quickly setting up Damien's second goal of the game with a brilliant forward pass, and then took his own goal some minutes later. Maybe it was a bit of a well-placed mis-hit, but I'm sure the kid'll take it. Then Duff finished the game off with another nice goal which was, get this, set up by ADAM SMITH and SHOLA AMEOBI. And let me tell you - it was a nice setup.

So the big stories of the match were Duff's hat trick and Guthrie's first start. The smaller stories were the following

Jonas Spiderman Gutierrez sat out the match because some paperwork hasn't been taken care of yet. He'll get in there soon I hope.

Owen and Beye were both kept out because they weren't feeling 100% before the match. It was wise of King Kev to leave them out and I hope to see them both soon as well.

James Milner, the target of Liverpool and Aston Villa this summer, moved from his usual winger role to a central midfielder and looked REALLY comfortable in there. He's always been a scrappy lad who loves to run but he never really had the best cross for a winger. Well, hey - why don't we see how he can do in the center? Seems about obvious enough and he showed some good stuff today. We'll see if KK wants to continue with it.

N'Zogbia started on the left wing and moved to Left Back later in the game, and I, for one, didn't hear a single whinge out of him...maybe I was standing too far away. HA!

So after the match, I got the not-quite-as familiar feeling of a job well done after a 4-1 victory. I know it was only against Hartlepool but come on - it's been a while since we've had this big a victory. (Not counting our last 4-1 win at Spurs of course - they don't really count as, well, they're Spurs. They're just easy.)

Anyway, if any of you would like to hear the eloquent King Kev wax about the match, here it is.

FC Tokyo and GINZA

I recently got a request from a reader to discuss the intreaguing season of FC Tokyo thus far to date. And I know ALL my readers must be sorely missing my match commentary since the Newcastle season is still about a month away. So until then, I'll try to do a better job of keeping everyone up to speed on the intruiging and somewhat enigmatic J-League season as seen from the eyes of a Tokyo FC supporter.

The season started out as well as we could hope for. J-League starts in March, and goes into November, lining up with MLS and opposite of the English Premier League. We started off 1-2-1 and then won 3 straight to ease into the third position in the league. At this point, the League went into the "golden week" schedule, similar to the christmas schedule in the Prem, where teams play 5 matches in a 15-day span. During this span, we won 2 and lost 3, but somehow we remained 3rd in the league. We continued at third place, after the following two games earned a win and draw.

Last week, we had to play the first place Urawa Reds, who I like to thnk of as the Japanese equivalent to Manchester United. A very large fan base, continually successful, and red uniforms. Urawa lost first place last season in the VERY LAST match of the season, by losing to one of the lowest position teams. We weren't as lucky as they were against them this time, as the Reds beat us 2-0, and that, coupled with some other unfortunate results for FC Tokyo saw us drop all the way down to 6th.

Finally, this week on Tuesday, the 15th, Tokyo lost ANOTHER match to drop even further - this time to Antlers of Kashima. After a 58th minute go-ahead goal by one of our Brazilian wonders Cabore, Antlers went on a rush with four goals in the final 30 minutes. This is a very disheartening loss, dropping us down to 8th place, and putting Antlers into 1st in the league, just above Reds by two points.

I'll be going to Japan in October and REALLY hope I'll be able to attend another match. If so, expect more photos. Until then, keep reading for more updates...

GINZA

Staying on the Japan front, we went to a new Japanese place for lunch today in River North at a restaurant called GINZA which is on the ground floor of the Tokyo Hotel. The Tokyo Hotel is straight out of Blade Runner, which is why I always thought the two restaurants on the street level (GINZA and a similar-looking chinese place) would also be ghetto and not worth my time or money. But at least in GINZA's case, boy was I wrong. Yes, it looks ghetto on the outside AND inside - no getting around that - but it's the BEST kind of ghetto. Inexpensive blond colored wood paneling, imitation "Oriental" style lights, and rice paper covering all the windows gave it a real hole-in-the-wall feeling that is so typical of only the best, cheap, street-food restaurants spotted throughout Tokyo. And surprisingly, once we got in, we heard a LOT of Japanese being spoken, between us and the waitresses AND between the waitresses and chefs. We went for lunch, sat at the bar (they've got a sushi bar that takes up over half of the space in the restaurant - great for atmosphere, and my favorite place to sit - always) I had the katsu-don (fried pork cutlet over rice and onions) and Mrs. Architecturefootballandfood had the sashimi special, both of which were delectable. Asako's sashimi was not only great tasting and a good variety, but also very interestingly presented. I got the katsudon because it's greasy and heavy and perfect for a ghetto environment such as GINZA's. So, if anybody is ever near ESPN Zone but don't want the crowds or overpriced fatburgers, I HIGHLY recomend GINZA at the foot of the Tokyo Hotel for a great time and a great meal.

Marketing

After hearing this past weekend that Mrs. Architecturefootballandfood's cousin is going through with the house we designed for her and is already in advance negotiations and value engineering with the contractor, all I can think about is continuing our little side project and building more houses and small architecture projects. We've been doing graphic design as our main money maker for way too long, and we've really always wanted to be architects, well and true. So now there are three things that we need. 1) a license. We actually DONT need it to do small house projects and stuff. But if we ever plan on becoming proper architects its the only thing we need to break that glass ceiling. And I just received my notice yesterday that I finished all necessary preliminary steps and now I can begin taking exams!!! Now I just need to start studying for them..... 2) A killer marketing strategy. This has been all I've been thinking about recently. How can a tiny little "office" like ours get clients - and the right kind of clients - to keep this feeling going? How can we turn one or two projects in to one or two hundred? I need to find out what that Facebook kid did. 3) PROJECTS. Hopefully this will come after we succeed at number 2. Or heck, even before. Spread the word people!! PLEX is BOND.

Any great marketing strategies? Leave 'em here.

A Change of Pace

For once, even while the ever-exciting transfer season of English football is going on, I'm actually NOT going to write about it (even after we signed a very quality and promising Argentinian player this week.) Nor am I going to write about food, which has quickly become the topic that most readers of this blog look forward to (and by "most," I mean two out of three), even though Mrs. Architecturefootballandfood and I made up two new recipes this week.
This blog needs a touch of class, a touch of personality to it. So I'm going to once again write a bit about architecture, and a very personal project for the missus and myself.

But first, I'm going to give you a link which you may or may not care to visit. Blog Tokyo, Expat Tokyo is an incredible resource of many great blogs by English speakers living in Japan, some American, most foreigners to Japan, all speaking and typing in English. There's some fascinating stuff going on in these blogs. As anybody who knows me knows, after my first trip to Japan, I was hooked, and I immediately fell in love with the country, its people and customs, and I love the fact that I get to go there every year. But even in those moments that I haven't been there in a while, I sometimes really long for it, and many times I wish I could live there, for countless reasons - most of them being cultural/quality of life related, but more and more increasingly, it has to do with a certain disdain for my own country - almost always being politically related. Anyway - these blogs simultaneously fill a void in me, and also make the void even more expansive, and that's something you gotta love.

Okay back to the architecture. Here's the scoop. Mrs. Architecturefootballandfood and I are (not surprisingly) architects. We eat, sleep, and breathe it (well - that and Newcastle United!!)(And actual food, of course. We enjoy eating real people food. Hence, the reviews on this blog.) so when we recently bought a new home in the River North area of Chicago, while we absolutely LOVE the place and are so happy we get to spend time in a place as cool as this, we immediately wanted to screw with it a bit. A house is like a laboratory for us - it's a great scale for us to look at, think about, and change. And we're pushing full steam ahead into our first real project within our house. Now, let me assure you - we've got big, big plans for pretty much every square inch of this house - but with a fairly limited budget you really can't take care of all of it at once, so we're spreading it out a bit. So the first area we've decided to take on is the master bathroom/walk in closet. This project, if we actually go through with it, will probably take quite a few months from here on out to finish. So I just wanted to introduce everybody to it, and let you know that you'll be hearing more from me about it in the future.

Basically, what we've got now is a bedroom, and off of the bedroom, there's a little 3' wide short hallway. To the left of the hallway you've got a walk in closet, about 5' x 7', and at the end of the hallway, you've basically got your typical master bath, double bowl vanity, toilet, and combo bath/shower at the end of the space. We've been beating ourselves over the head to figure out how we can use the space better, and hopefully get a more "Japanese" bath configuration in there, which is a separate shower and bath, all in one, big wet zone. We want our bath to be very, very simple and clean, like everything else we design, but give an extreme sense of calm and weight. As most of you know, we constantly want to be surrounded by clean white - so the majority of the project will be stark white, with very nice dark grey stone throughout the tub area.

This project, as I said, has come through countless maserations and editions, ranging from the near brilliant with one or two insurmountable hang-ups, to the obsurd with hardly any redeemable qualities. Unfortunately for my ego, I must say that the majority of my ideas fell into the latter column - per typical. HA! So here we are today - we think we've slowly solved each problem and have come to a wonderful and doable solution. Right now we're at the stage where the easy, fun design-y part is over and we've begun really looking at tiny, tiny details about wet/dry zones, materials, lights, where corners meet each other, etc etc. The way architecture works is like everything else in that the more detail you get into the more problems arise and just as soon as you think you're out of the woods, something new and horrible pops up. We've come into this already about 300 times, and it's only a matter of time before it happens again. The question is, will it be something big enough to deflate the whole project or can we somehow navigate through it. This is something we'll have to figure out.

So I look forward to taking you through this journey of ours.

Oh, also - great news tonight in that the house we designed for Mrs. Architecturefootballandfood's cousin is, indeed, going through and after securing a general contractor in Japan, we found out today that they've been slowly and steadily going through the "value engineering" phase of the project where they try to get the budget down enough by taking out size or individual pieces of the project little by little. They've done a great job, and apparently they're on schedule to start construction in the fall sometime. We'll be heading out to Japan this fall, so hopefully it'll be begun by then. We'll keep you informed on this too! Don't forget to keep checking plexdesign.net for updates! (it's been funky on Internet Explorer lately - but should work fine on Firefox for some reason)

Comments welcome.