The Happy Bears Vist A Farm and Restaurant that Does it Organic, from Scratch and Delicious

The Happy Bears went to Harong restaurant to try Hanjeongsik, which is a Korean traditional spread of banchana, rice and meat. It was to royal cuisine in the most peasant way making simple food using what is local and prepared on the farm that they own as well.  All of prepared with a high respect for food. It was a perfect example of farm to table. Everything to the rice sugar was made for on the farm or paid for at a premium price. That oil is Rice Bran Oil. It's really expensive and is of fantastic quality.  And all of it was delicious.

The exterior was beautiful and so was the interior but we came for the food.

We had high expectations of this place before arriving. Greg requested to Ziyeon our translator that they give us everything they had and they did till we were bursting from so much of a good thing.


So instead of feeding us one meat for our meal. They fed us two 


But first, we toured the kitchen and saw some of the ingredients they were using. The farmer and cook were preparing our meals in the warm and intimate wood laden restaurant.


The woman came over and hand fed Anina tofu which Anina said, "Tasted fresher and more earthy than any other tofu I've had before."


We all liked it a lot and the other things she showed us. It was a sign of the goodness to come. We just didn't know how good it was going to be.

The Happy Bears climbed a staircase to the second floor and sat on cushions on the floor. A few minutes later, we were served our first course of white tofu sprinkled with black sesame seeds, fresh kimchi, and the  most succulent pork laid out on a platter.
The kimchi and tofu were delicious and home made.


The pork dish is called Bossam. It is not traditional Hanjeongsik, but was presented to us to showcase good Korean organic pork. It was slowed cooked in a simmering pot with flavors of ginger, rice syrup, garlic, and soy bean paste, until the meat absorbs the flavor


It was the best pork belly these writers have tasted. Pork belly cured into bacon in America. It was so tender and so flavorsome we are still talking about it. Read more about in the amazing tastes section above.

Next came the banchan dishes (Korean 'side dishes') nestled on a woven platter.


They consisted of pickled garlic; pickled cabbage; raw white radish and a dark wild mountain green mixed with chili paste and perilla powder; sweetened pickled cucumbers; a dish on its own of kimchi; bracken fern (gosari-namul 고사리나물); and slices of chewy but slightly crunchy lotus root(yeongeun 연근)  marinated in a sweet sauce of homemade brown rice syrup, sesame oil and soy sauce.

From bottom left to right around: pickled cucumber, kimchi, gosari,  yeongeun,  and  pickled cabbage. In the center is pickled garlic. 

Gosari-namul or bracken fern is often passed by and ignored by mountain hikers in the west but it is full of vitamins, antioxidents, and LA and ALA fatty acids. It's a cheap wild food which has become a staple ingredient in bibimbap and was always around in famine times for people when they needed it. 

Andy and Greg tried to recreate the gosari namul here and they  learn a lot by what we missed. 

One might compare lotus root to what we know as water chestnut in Chinese cooking, but it is a bit heavier, chewier and starchier. And when sliced, it has a complex, geometrical design which you can see in the photo below. It's high in iron, vitamin B1 and vitamin C, and fiber.  It can be eaten as a fruit, sliced and stir-fried, or made into a tea for digestive problems. This dish we quickly devoured. 

Lotus Root  banchan which Anina and Greg were inspired to make later. 

The next dish was 'dotorimuk' which is acorn jelly. A brownish, slightly bitter flavored jelly, rich in starch, proteins, and fiber, whose flavors really come out in its sauce - drizzled in toasted sesame oil and topped with sesame seeds, its perimeter consisted of crisp green cabbage mixed with cucumber, onions, and chili paste for a fresh-from-the-ground, invigorating burst of spiciness.


The taste of the jelly was nutty with a tanin coffee body which was complimented well but it's complex sweet, sour, garlic, sesame, and ginger sauce. 

Made from wild harvested acorns the Dotorimuk sits atop a bowl of raw sliced vegetables. 

Then came individually-served black ceramic bowls containing crab legs in-shell with slices of spring onion, sesame seeds, and a thin shallow layer of fishy broth. This is called 간장 개장.


Liked by some foreigners, it's texture is a challenge for others. The results from the group were mixed. Although all liked the soft, only Greg liked the texture. If you can get past the texture of the crunchy shell the insides are succulent and delicious. 

The restaurant owners were giving us everything they had. The happy bears were bursting.  We tried our best to eat it all. Greg opted out of eating rice so I could make room for more food. Mike ate meat for the first time in 2 years to help Greg. Andy's face was red from meat consumption and Anina and Tanya did their best

Next, came a patty of tender ground beef mixed with onions and garlic and thinly drizzled with two different sauces, one sweet and dark, the other yellow and more tart, called tteokgalbi (떡갈비). The tteokgalbi aren't just beef patties. They are high quality ground meat from beef ribs. The meat is marinated for a day  in Korean flavors of ginger, garlic, rice sugar, and soy sauce, and vinegar.

The taste of tteokgalbi is like a marinated hamburger patty which is pan roasted so it retains its fat. It was delicious. 

Finally came a dish of the classic chewy, warm, slightly toasted white rice cakes with a side bowl of rice syrup to dip them in.garaetteok 가래떡; also called huin tteok, 흰떡, which means white tteok.


We all wanted to eat them all but we were too stuffed to eat all of them. But we had a job to try them, so we did. 


They were simple and delicious. Simply a plain rice cake. For those who have never had a Korean rice cake, we'll describe it. The texture is chewy. Imagine eating an inch wide chewy pasta noodle with the pleasing taste of white rice with a rice sugar on it. It was perfect simple sweet finish to the the complex flavors of food we had been eating.


And to end this perfect meal from farm to table was we a cool, light reddish colored digestive tea called Omija 오미자. It's made from the berries of schizandra chinesis. It's also known as the 'five-flavored fruit' for it encompasses the flavors of sweet, sour, salty, pungent, and bitter. The berries from schizandra chinensis have medicinal properties that are adaptogenic which means that your body can use it strenghten any system of the body, from the immune system, nervous system, lymphatic system, cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal system, to the endocrine system. It increases our bodies' ability to fight stress. In other words, it makes us stronger. It gave us a pleasing finish to our happy meal. 


Upon leaving, we walked out through a different part of the restaurant which housed private booths of hand-cut looking wooden tables, delicately hung string lights, and a piano. Such a beautiful place.

White Crane Farm Restaurant

백학농원 호롱마을

이 희 천 010-5506-9750

전북정읍시 수성동 1030-8번지

063-531-7741

-Greg and Anina