Dinner at Seoul House

Not my photo

This past Thursday I went to dinner with my gym night team, Tropicana. We have a couple of weeks off because I believe the high school gym we rent out is being used by the school.

We planned to meet at Seoul House, a Korean restaurant on Steeles, west of Yonge at 6:30 p.m. It's not far from where I play hockey on Friday nights. I noticed when I drove to hockey that I passed a Subaru car dealership and an Active Green + Ross garage. Since my car is basically a Subaru Impreza (it's a Saab 9-2x) on the inside I thought I could go by for an oil change before dinner.

I contacted the Subaru dealership and their basic oil change was $50. A bit steep as far as I was concerned. The Active Green + Ross had a deal for $19.95. I called them in the morning and asked if I should make an appointment. I said I wanted to come by at around 5:30 p.m. They said I didn't have to make an appointment, just to come in.

At a little after 5:00 p.m. I left my place and headed up Yonge to get an oil change. As usual the traffic was terrible. It took longer to get to the garage than I expected. I didn't arrive until 10 or 15 minutes to 6:00.

When I went in to the Green + Ross it was empty. The fellow at the counter was on the phone. I waited a short time until he finished speaking with the person on the end of the line then asked him if I could get an oil change. He told me that I had to come back because they were busy. I thought he was joking, but I guess he wasn't. The garage was pretty small. I think they had three bays. He said there were two mechanics there and that they would be busy the rest of the night (until they closed at 8:00 p.m.). This sort of annoyed me because I called earlier asking if I should book an appointment and the person said I didn't have to. Anyway, what could I do? I just left. But, I was still too early to go to dinner.

I headed north towards Steeles. I was close to Centerpoint Mall, so I figured I could go there to kill a bit of time. When I drove into the parking lot I noticed a Canadian Tire there. I decided to go in and inquire about their oil changes. The girl at the counter said they were $30 and that they could do them pretty quickly. I told her I was meeting friends for dinner soon, so I didn't have much time.

Well, of course, they took longer than expected. I watched as the clock in the waiting room hit 6:30, then 6:40, then 6:50. It wouldn't have been that bad if I could contact someone from our team to say I was going to be late, but I didn't have anyone's phone number. Anyway, I finally paid and was able to go.

I headed out as quickly as I could from the mall. I knew the restaurant was on the north side of Steeles a bit west of Yonge. Unfortunately I didn't check the exact address. I thought I would be able to see it driving by. Well, that didn't quite happen. It was situated further in off the road. I ended up wasting a few minutes driving around lost.

I arrived at the restaurant at 7:00. Half an hour late. To my surprise no one had ordered yet. And I wasn't even the last person to arrive. I was relieved about that. One car with three people (Andrew, Winnie and Wendy) came after. They had been stuck in traffic they said.

We ordered soon after that. Sang Hee (who organized the dinner) ordered some traditional Korean appetizers for everyone to share. Of course they brought all the little small dishes of appetizers too. The items on the restaurant menu were quite wide and varied. They had Korean, Chinese and Japanese. Probably too much as far as I was concerned.

I ordered Dolsot Bibimbap. It's a Korean rice dish with meat and vegetables in it. I figured since I was in a Korean restaurant I'd order Korean food. It made sense to me. I've had Bibimbap before and it's something I know I can handle. Some Korean dishes are too spicy for me. This one had spicy sauce on the side. You could add as much or as little as you want. Of course I hardly added any.

Dinner was good. We chatted about a lot of different things. Rupert told us about this TV quiz show he likes. We saw a clip on their iPhone. It was pretty crazy. They ask and answer the questions so quickly.

We also chatted about old television shows that we liked. Most of the guys spoke about shows they watched in the 80's. I suppose you can get a feel for how old our group is by the stuff we talk about.

All in all the evening was good. I think we all had an enjoyable time out. Thanks go out to Sang Hee for sending the Evite out. We have one more week off from gym night. So, I'll see the gang for floor hockey the following Thursday.