철판 구이 (Cheolpan Gui)

Last night U-rim and I headed to 놀부 (Nolbu), a chain of Korean restaraunts that recently opened a branch near our homestead. On this particular night we opted for 철판 구이. Before we undertake the gastronomical aspect of this adventure, I'll hook you up with some quick Korean/Hanja lessons, because I care about you kids.
철판 (鐵板) literally means "iron board." The first part, 鐵, is the same character that appears in the word 지하철 (地下鐵) literally "underground iron" this is the word we all know and love as subway (and if my memory of my one semester of Japanese is correct this is the same word they use as well...though the reading of the characters are different).
구이 is a lot less interesting. It's simply a cooking technic of roasting meat of fish with seasonings. So anyhow that's what we ordered, and here's the photo evidence.


Like countless other Korea dishes, this particular dish is cooked at your table. Here U-rim models the meal's ingredients: 삼겹살 (sam gyup sal aka the meat), cloves of garlic, onion, mushrooms, potatoes, bean sprouts, kimchi, sesame leaves, some other unit that U-rim claimed was a green onion, but tasted nothing like a green onion.


The ingredients are then put on the aforemention iron surface and the cooking begins. Unlike other restaraunts were the customers are left to their own devices in the cooking process, this venue had a dude who did the cooking for us at the table. He is off to the right.


It wouldn't be Korean food without gochu-jang! The red pepper paste was added to the meat and vegetables and roasted on the iron board. Looks delicious!


After consuming the bulk of the food on the iron board, our personal chef returned and fried up some rice for us. You can't really tell from this picture, but the rice is in the shape of a heart.

In all it was a wicked delicious meal, though extremely filling. We ordered 이인분 / 二人分 (aka serving for 2 people) are were both ready to bust at the end.