Today I had planned on eating lunch at a Chinese restaurant to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Instead I celebrated the Korean New Year by eating at a Korean restaurant.

I left for lunch a little later than planned and by the time I made it to the Ulferts Center parking was almost impossible to find and all the Chinese restaurants had lines out the door.

I had already had it in the back of my mind to go instead to the Korean restaurant because of the the Olympics, so headed that way.

It is also the Korean New Year today as they use the same Lunar calendar as China. In fact there are several other countries where the new year starts today.

Odagada has Chicken and Katsu for specialties, but you can get other types of Korean food as well.

I had not eaten here before, but when I entered it looked very familiar as a Pho restaurant I used to eat at was in the same space.

You can see here that the restaurant was not very busy. If you look at your calendar you will probably see that today is the Chinese New Year, with no mention of any of the others. This gets people thinking about Chinese food.

I decided to order the Pork Katsu. When I looked at their website last week it had caught my eye and I had been wanting to try it. I usually think of Katsu as being Japanese cuisine, but it is also common in Korean cuisine.

The items that accompany the pork cutlet are definitely more Korean. Here is the banchan or small dishes that were served with my Katsu. On the left is some delicious kimchi, then some noodles and on the right spicy cucumbers.

Macaroni, salad, rice and a couple pickles completed the sides. Overall a very well balanced plate.

I really enjoyed my lunch today and it brought back memories of my trips to South Korea. I also watched a little bit of curling while eating lunch as they had the Olympics on. However, I mostly just read a very interesting book on social intelligence.

On the way home from work I stopped at an Asian grocery and picked up a few items including a Taiwan style mung bean pastry. I have been enjoying it while writing this post.

Now to enjoy a nice three day weekend.

Steven