Yaksan Restaurant
Seen in Changgwang Restaurant Street in downtown Pyongyang is the Yaksan Restaurant where ostrich dishes are served.
Opened in the 1980s, it served various special dishes. From February 2010 it began to serve ostrich dishes.
It
was over ten years ago that African ostriches began to be bred in the
DPRK. Originally they lived in savannahs or semi-deserts. Now they have
been acclimatized to the temperate climatic and soil conditions of the
country and ostrich ranches have appeared in several places, with the
result that their number is on the rapid increase.
The restaurant prepares dishes with ostrich meat produced at the ranch in the outskirts of Pyongyang.
When
its cooks began to prepare ostrich dishes, they had some problems
because they were strangers to the methods of cooking. But the cooks
managed to master relevant cooking methods in a short period. Through
frequent cooking classes, dish shows and technical studies, they came to
know well about the peculiarity and medicinal value of ostrich meat and
became able to cook various dishes without detracting its nutritive
value.
The restaurant mainly serves roast ostrich and spicy ostrich soup. Roast ostrich is served together with Pyongyang naengmyon (cold noodle).
On
order, it also serves ostrich sausage, steamed ostrich neck, soup of
ostrich strings, steamed ostrich feet, seasoned raw liver and stomach of
ostrich, hard-boiled ostrich wing and ostrich heart dishes.