Instead of going somewhere for the entirety of my four day holiday (for Buddha’s Birthday). I decided to take two days off to rest and to have two day trips visiting with friends. First I went to Uijeongbu, which is where I originally was suppose to go in Korea to teach. Due to situations beyond my control I didn’t end up in Uijeongbu but I’ve been wanting to see the city in a curious “what could have been” kind of way. I have a friend who lives there so I decided with the time off it’d be a prefect time to go see her.
I got a bit lost trying to exit Uijeongbu station (there’s an underground market and I ended up there when I should’ve gone up to meet my friend). Our first stop was lunch and she directed me and (another friend of hers who’d spent the night) to her favorite Mexican restaurant called Oh! Taco. She quickly warned us that the lunch menu didn’t count on the weekends so to ignore that and gave us her favorites from the menus which included the tacos, bacon mac and cheese and the quesadillas. I picked the quesadillas because it was one of the few things on the menu without cilantro. (Cilantro tastes like soap to me). In Korea usually I can’t ask for things to come without certain things. I can’t ask for things to be made not spicy or cilantro to be removed. At least not easily and not in most restaurants where specialty orders just aren’t done. (I’ve learned to live with burgers with everything on them much to my own surprise as a person who spent 20 some years eating them plain) So I was surprised when my friend said that menu items at Oh! Taco can be edited and the staff member who took our orders asked if we were okay with things like onions or cilantro being in our food or if we wanted the hot sauce or not. I assume this, along with the fact they had a sign saying they took USD is due to the fact Uijeongbu is near an US army base and it’s popular with soldiers.
We ended up starting with a bacon mac and cheese which we split as an appetizer and it was delightful. Then came our drinks. Everyone else at the table got frozen margaritas (~7,000 won/$7). I enjoyed my horchata.
And then we had our food. I got a chicken quesadilla. According to the menu this was “a flour tortilla (with) meat, onion, cheese and sour cream” with options of beef, chicken, pork vegetarian or chipotle shrimp. Prices varied depending on meat from 9,000 won to 10,000 won.
It wasn’t bad, just surprisingly oily. Either from the meat or the cheese it was messy. Which I’m never a huge fan of. We ended up having to ask for mul tissues which they grabbed from the fridge in the back. It wasn’t particularly spicy but I did eat a lot of the sour cream with it.
The menu at Oh! Taco is in both English and Korean and the staff speaks English. They also offer a fun competition for people who like spicy food. It’s called the Death Taco Challenge and offers 2 spicy tacos in chicken, pork, or beef with a couple other things and if you finish it your meal is free and your picture goes on the wall. Oh! Taco is open for lunch and dinner with a break in the afternoon. (break seems to be from 2:30-5pm, but they may also be open but just keep it in mind) Minus the possible break they are open daily from 11:30 am until 11pm.
You may also note that they have avocado dishes on the menu and be like, but wait you love avocado why didn’t you order any and try it????? I brought up both the avocado fries and the guacamole as options for an appetizer at our table and my friend said that both aren’t particularly great in her opinion, being about 70% onion. So as a person who likes their avocado to be 90% of the dish I skipped trying it. Their picture on their menu of their guacamole on their website also seems to be mostly onion as well. As for their avocado fries I’m not sure. But their mac and cheese with bacon was really good so I think we made the right choice.