Oh. Yeah: Ssam Gyeop Sal

We make fire. Cook meat. Mm. Technically, waitstaff make fire, but we did cook our own meat! Welcome to ssam gyeop sal, the Korean barbecue that no one I know of can resist. A bowl of hot charcoal is brought to your table and placed under a little grill. You get a big plate of lettuce leaves and sometimes sesame leaves (a relative of Japanese shiso), spicy soy bean paste, and various vegetable toppings, plus a big plate of raw meat that you get to cook up just the way you like. It's usually sliced really thinly so that it cooks up quickly, and our first plate was gone in less than 30 minutes.

See? Meat! Plus a handy vacuum hose that can be moved up and down as needed to suck up all the smoke. We had beef marinated in spicy sauce, but you can also get plain beef in various cuts, pork belly, mushrooms, and more.

Aaaghh.... That's a sigh of contentment trying to work its way out through a mouthful of this wonderment. Take a leaf or two of lettuce, add a smear of soy bean paste, pile on some green onion shredded and mixed with sesame oil and some spices, follow that with a bit of spicy radish kimchi, a grilled up bit of garlic if it's available, and, finally, meat. I started layering mine this way because occasionally the meat, so fresh off the grill, can make my fingers feel uncomfortably warm, and I don't want anything getting in the way of my ssam gyeop sal enjoyment. Technique is as varied as the different add-ins can be, and you may find yourself with shredded cabbage in place of green onions, cucumber or cabbage instead of radish, sesame oil with sea salt as a dipping sauce. The main idea is that when you eat meat you should eat a vegetable with it, and why not just wrap it in a vegetable too?

Yes. The grill is cooling, little bits of burnt grease and the scent of smoke in my clothing all that's left of our dinner, and my inner caveman has been satisfied. For now.