We spent the day in Tysons and McLean, Virginia for a cultural event.

In 2024, when I returned from a full scholarship to Busan, South Korea, I promised myself one thing: as long as it was financially sound to do so, I wanted to keep my life interesting and full of curiosity. I love to travel, but as someone who doesn’t have a car and leaves in suburbia (aka: somewhere that doesn’t have public transportation), I’ve been at the mercy of other people and Ubers.

Hopefully by the time this blog post comes out I would have been able to afford a new car and purchased one, as I anticipate this post coming out later due to my scheduling process. But anyways, in 2025 I’ve been curating a lot of little small moments with friends and families in the form of staycations, day trips, and even a spontaneous Europe road trip across five different countries in the Alps.

A lot of these experiences I’ve been writing about on my blog, but I’ve also been doing my day trips and little excursions. This has been inspired by my time browsing the Korean internet, as a lot of Naver bloggers do posts about local parks, cafes, and so much more. I find that so cute compared to just posting an Instagram story, so that’s what I’ve been channeling lately.

Today’s blog post stems from another unexpected plan that came to life. One day I was cooking dinner (it was a lovely Moroccan couscous) when I happened to look at my email inbox. I get email blasts from both the NYC and DC Korean Cultural Centers because I’m always curious about their events, and this time I saw they were having a group called Gonia for a free performance in Tysons Corner.

Gonia is a group that does Korean traditional music, so pansori and a janggu, or Korean drum, along with more contemporary jazz (they have a guitarist and bassist). I thought this was such an interesting mix, so I asked my friend if she wanted to go and she was down.

So we made an entire day out of it! This is what we did throughout our long afternoon in Tysons Corner with a pit stop in McLean.

Parsa Bakery is a great Iranian bakery, especially when paired with a dinner at Ingle Korean Steakhouse.

When we left from Baltimore at around 3 PM that day, I did not expect that much traffic on a Saturday but forgot that the DMV is always a nightmare. Whenever my family would drive down on Sundays, there wouldn’t be a ton of traffic. We used to down to Tysons Corner just to get Shamshiry, as my father always talked about how he got Shamshiry in the Tehran Bazaar with his uncle.

After an hour and forty minutes of traffic, we arrived to our first destination: Parsa Bakery in McLean, Virginia. This is somewhere I’ve been meaning to go for a while, as it’s a pretty well known Iranian bakery. My sister also knew about this bakery because her coworker recommended it to me.

It’s pretty spacious and there are a couple of tables to sit at in the second room, but it’s mainly a place where you pick up your items and leave immediately. They have Iranian groceries as soon as you enter, including babari and sangak, but I picked up a Sadaf cinnamon container for my mother and then moved onto the baked goods case.

We didn’t go into the second room, which I believe had more cookies and zulbia for sale back there, but I chose a fig hazelnut delight and four chocolate baklava. It was $8, and I believe I should have gotten more because this was the minimum price. My friend got an entire box full of cookies and paid only about $11.

We were both blown away by the quality and taste of the goods we purchased. I genuinely think this is some of the best chocolate baklava I’ve ever had. It was legitimately perfect for me, and I keep ranting about how good that baklava was when I remember the memory of it. The delight was good as well, but she gave me the wrong flavor from what I said and I was too shy to correct it, so I think the flavor just wasn’t suited for me.

After our pit stop at Parsa, we went to Ingle Korean Steakhouse 15 minutes down the road for dinner. This is an upscale Korean BBQ spot, and the decor and service was definitely matching the aesthetic they were going for. We arrived around opening (5 PM) and were seated immediately, but there was definitely a bit of a rush to get out later as they got more crowded.

We ordered all of the sides (asparagus, ssam, mushrooms, and cheese corn), the galbi, the hanger steak, and then a half-size doenjang jjigae. I honestly would skip most of the sides next time unless you want ssam (although $8 for lettuce and perilla seems a bit steep), but the doenjang jjigae was fantastic and out of this world. Some banchan were provided.

I thought this was a nice date night place, but I could see people leaving here hungry. I’ve been to nice upscale KBBQ in Los Angeles and left stuffed (and I thought the banchan at that place in LA was better), but here I was just mildly full despite us ordering way too many sides. Our bill was $200 with tip for two people (including my friend’s drink), but I don’t know if I would go out of my way to come back here. It was good though, just not super high quality for the price.

The band Gonia with the DC Korean Culture Center was such a fun and incredible experience!

We finished up eating after an hour at Ingle, then drove down to the main part of Tysons to Capital One Hall for the main event for the night. They had signs up for parking at the nearby garage, and I paid for the parking since my friend was kind enough to drive. It was only $15, which wasn’t bad at all, but the metro stop was nearby too.

Capital One Hall was quite a nice space, and this was general admission. So when I picked up our tickets and we headed inside, we picked some seats in the back. It was a very small space that fit about a 100-200 people max, and it wasn’t full. The concert started at 7:05 after the DC Korean Cultural Center people introduced it, and Gonia started off with some jazz pieces.

I had little to no expectations coming into this performance, and we both thought this was so much fun. They did a mix of original jazz pieces without vocals, and each artist (the janggu percussionist, guitarist, and bassist) really had a moment to shine in these pieces. I really liked their piece about the guitarist’s deceased father he had prepared.

Then the vocalist came out and introduced pansori to the crowd, as well as some chants we could do as an audience. This was such a concert vibe rather than a traditional music concert, so when the vocals were busted out, people were clapping, waving their hands, and chanting.

It was such a vibe, and there was a mix of all different kinds of people, not just Koreans. It was a shame it was only an hour, but I could see how this was an hour and could exhaust the performers. This is to say that I really enjoyed it!

I was chatting with a Korean family that came in, as the mother was shocked I spoke Korean, and my fun anecdote of the night was she asked if I was single and available for someone. My Korean isn’t that good (it’s intermediate mid level as of my last certification exam), so this was hilarious to me.

Before in the day we were debating going to Qamaria Coffee for Yemeni coffee and a dessert after the concert, but we were so stuffed from dinner and had desserts from Parsa, so we drove home. It was only an hour to get home at least, as the traffic had come to a stop, although we got a severe flood warning when driving through Montgomery County and lowkey feared for our lives for a bit.

And that was the end of our little day outside! It was such a nice outing, and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for future events at the Korean Cultural Center.