I haven't had Samgyupsal for the longest time... so
we headed to Honey Pig. Samgyupsal(direct translation meaning Three layered meat) is like bacon but fresh not smoked. Oooooo~

We ordered 2 servings of Samgyupsal and each of us ordered cold noodle soup, Nangmyun. I ordered Mul Nangmyun and June ordered spicy Bibim Nangmyun.

Love these sides that comes with Samgyupsal! If you eat onions, kimchi, sprouts with the bbq...Mmmmmmmmmmm!

Oh and don't forget to eat it with your salad and dipping sauces.

They also gave us green onion Kimchi called PaKimchi as well for bbq. (I love that Kimchi so we asked little more on the side to eat). And love their steamed eggs and DoenJangJjigae (bean paste stew) too.

My Mulnangmyun was good too. I ate it with BBQ. Some eat afterwards but I just enjoyed it together. Put some vinegar and mustard and very nice and cold.

June's spicy Bibim Nangmyun. It's actually sweet and spicy. June couldn't wait for me and just started to mix the sauce.

I had to stop her for a minute and take the picture. Guess  June was as excited as I was about our Christmas Lunch..Yes it was lunch;;;;. We were starving so we became real quiet after taking these pictures and started to dig in.

We were very full (we finished it all....!)but we couldn't skip the free Korean style sweet coffee on our way out. They have a machine near the door. Just push the button and small coffee cup will come out....wait little bit till coffee's done and Enjoy~

I usually drink black coffee for the caffeine boost but after eating spicy Korean food, sweet coffee is the best way to wrap up the meal. And did I mention it's FREE? ... Mmmm good~

I also have a picture of other Entree called Bulnak Chulpan-Stir Fry BBQ of Bulgogi + Octopus in Spicy sauce.

I didn't eat it the same day...FYI..this one I ate with a friend. Thanks for the food, San!

On the menu, all the Chulpan menus (not the BBQ but one grill flipped the other way like the picture), when you are almost done with your food ( you gotta leave some to fry with rice), ask your server to stir fry rice with it. Then they'll bring a bowl of rice with lots of veggies and sauce and fry with your leftover entree. That's my favorite part of this menu.

I love eating Chulpan menu for that extra stir fried rice...(I forgot to take a pic of this...will add later when I get to go again).

Anyhow back to Christmas....And that's where I spent my Christmas Lunch...afterwards...I had major food coma for hours...I found Honey Pig 10% off coupon. The link shows lunch specials too...it expires this week so Enjoy!

Honey Pig Korean B-B-Q
10045 Baltimore National Pike
Rt. 40 West behind Double T Diner
Ellicott City, MD 21042
Ph: 410-696-2426

Korean BBQ Grills on ebay:

Aluminum Thai Lao Korean-Style Barbecue BBQ Grill Topper 35cm 14" US $56.01

Stove Top Non Stick Indoor Korean BBQ Barbeque Grill US $14.95

Aluminum Thai Lao Korean-Style Barbecue BBQ Grill Topper 12" US $38.77

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Korean Japanese Style BBQ Grill Steak Hot Pan + Stove Set US $69.99

korean bbq & teppanyaki grill NONSTICK BBQ LINER SHEET MAT TEFLON for BBQ plate US $26.39

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After my first visit, I didn't really find any reason for me to go back there but people have been telling me including "Jay" from the comment that Tian actually GOT better. Also they started this 99cents Jjajangmyun which seems to catch everyone's attention. So we finally revisited that place.

We ordered PahlBochae (Seafood Mix) and two orders of Jjajangmyun. We found out that each bowl of Jjajangmyun automatically adds a dollar tip. So I guess you could say that Jjajangmyun is $1.99 which is still not too bad. Although the taste has nothing so special but for that price it was pretty good and pretty good serving size too. Also Pahl Bo Chae was pretty good too.

Foods were way better than last time. I can't really say they have their own special taste in what I ate today but still it was pretty good. It seemed as though it was a totally different restaurant from the first time.

Most of all, the customer service was EXCELLENT!
Our server was so nice and prompt. So different from last time. Servers were actually trained and our server just knew what we needed right on time.
Little extra bonus was that when we were walking out the owner gave us the 'leftover' Valentine's Day balloons. I don't really know what I would do with it but just getting it made me feel good.
May be I'm just so easy to please...LOL.

Anyhow...it was a pleasant experience for me overall. Everything seemed to be in order and I was actually able to enjoy food there. Nice.

*I went back again about a week later and tried YooSanSeul my mistake...it was YangJangpi (Mixture of veggies and meat with spicy mustard sauce.) It was good and it was a humongous dish. Four people ate it and we were full. Looked nice and tasted good as well. I forgot to take the picture...I'll definitely take a picture for you next time.*

In case you still don't know where this Tian is, Tian (티엔) is located near Lotte in Ellicott City, MD right on Rt 40 and Rt 29.

I love this park! I had to take some pictures...Let's see...

Busy, busy. I wonder what they were up to?

Can you find birds here?

Geese...

Geese...

more over here...

Geese...Geese...Everywhere!

Up there too!

Amongst geese I spotted some short necks too...

I 'met' these four ducks. Of course, they weren't afraid of me. They came closer to me wanting 'something' but I wasn't prepared...sigh...

They must be very close friends since they were the only four doing something together away from others and acting funny.

So had to take a vid of them.

OR...were they just eating??? They just stuck their beaks like that the whole time they were swimming...looked funny and cute.

It was a nice stroll at a park during crisp but sunny winter day.

I went to Tian the first week they opened. As soon as I walked in, I realized that they did spend some money in interior design. Compared to other Korean restaurants interior was better than any other except that the seating arrangement was too tight and felt like one giant cafeteria table. Other customers (total strangers) were only about a foot away from me. That was uncomfortable.

Servers, whew... wasn't trained at all. But it seems like all the Korean restaurants don't emphasize in training their employee about the importance in customer service. No one smiled, no one was being nice. They were all confused and weren't providing customer service. They were just 'delivering' food.
Enough about the service. This is not the first time I had problem with service in Korean restaurants. I also took some pictures of food I ordered.

So we ordered, Jjamppong and Jjajangmyeon Combo called JjamJjamyeon (First word of each dish combined to make a name) Jjamppong is a spicy seafood noodle soup and Jjajangmyeon(or Jajangmyeon) is a noodle dish with black bean paste (Chunjang) sauce stir fried with veggies and meat. The menu said that they use No MSG, which turned out to be the first good thing about this restaurant since other Korean-Chinese restaurants are known to use a lot of MSG to make Jjajangmyeon tasty. The taste was OK and NOTHING special with noodles (some places make their own hand pulled noodles-if you hear pounding sound back at the Kitchen, they are making your noodles.I don't think Tian makes its own.)

And we ordered, Sachun Tangsuyuk, which was supposed to be a spicy sweet and sour beef (You can choose different meat for this dish. Pork or beef. We chose beef.) We also asked to have sauce on the side so our meat won't get soggy and if we have a leftover, we can take it home. Sweet and sour pork/beef is fried, crispy meat and veggies served with sweet and sour sauce. The price was lower than Hanjoongkwan in Ellicott City, MD, another Korean-Chinese restaurant, but it turned out that the serving was smaller too. Only thing I can say about this dish is that I'll NEVER going to order this dish again!!! It wasn't spicy. It wasn't sweet. It was just sour. It didn't have usual veggies in it. Only thing 'floating' in our sauce was some cucumber and scallions?!? I've never seen any restaurant serving sweet and sour sauce with scallions... It's usually cucumbers, some seafood, pineapple, carrots, peppers, onions...etc. Not scallions... I urge you not to order this dish. Please don't.

My first impression of Tian was not good at all. Too busy with untrained servers, who were obviously confused, and weird dishes that failed to impress me. However this was MY only first experience. I've heard better things from other people. Some people say that the regular Tangsuyuk is OK and that some people actually like their noodle dishes too, because Tian doesn't use MSG. Maybe I'll go try the regular Tangsuyuk next time too. I hope they don't have scallions floating around again...

If you want to try it yourself, Tian (티엔) is located near Lotte in Ellicott City, MD. If you go, please tell us what it was like.