"If you've read any of my other reviews regarding Korean food, you'll know I spent several years there. I LOVED it. The people were friendly, and the food was great. This restaurant is very typical of what you would find in S. Korea..a basement' like...restaurant in a food store. Seoul Gate looks like a dive bar, but it is anything but. When we entered it was full of families, soldiers, and couples enjoying their food. For the food was very good. There was plenty of it. My husband ordered the spicy' pork, as he usually does, and I ordered the bibimbap, as I usually do. If you've never eaten bibimbap, it's pretty much a salad' with meat that one mixes with rice. There are two types, dolsot', which means hotstone, where your meal comes in a VERY HOT cast iron or stoneware bowl. I don't like that, I like plain ol' bibimbap, with a room temperature bowl. The pan chan..the small side dishes every respectable Korean restaurant provides..was okay. Three types of kimchi, lots of kongnamul (bean sprouts), etc. The kimchi was very good. We ordered appetizers of calamari...which came in huge rings, like onion rings, and mandu. Mandu is much like a pot sticker'. The calamari was HOT but had been overcooked so it was chewy and the breading came away from it. The entire restaurant is so reminiscent of Korea that I felt like I'd been transported back to Pyongtaek. When we entered we were seated by a rather unhappy appearing Korean woman. She treated us as just another trio or miguk salam (Americans) I kept at it though, using my fairly substantial (for a round eye white woman) Korean to order our meals. I don't know why so often, Korean servers are, as one poster put it, curt and disengaged. It may be because, as so many servers of all cuisines will tell you, customers can be incredibly rude and..let's face it..racist. Our server was busy. The place was packed with Americans and Koreans and she was the only one on the floor. It took some time to get her to take our orders and provide us dinnerware and drinks. I must have softened her up, though, because suddenly, as we were leaving, she brightened up and cheerfully wished us all thank you and good day-in Korean. Perhaps it was, also, because the number of customers had dropped considerably, and she could finally take the time to acknowledge that this round eye, for once, was trying her best to be hospitable to her server. Should I ever go back to Fairbanks, I'll also go back to the Seoul Gate."
