This article got me very excited about going to Los Angeles. With a Korean girlfriend – and a Korean girlfriend’s mother – I’ve had the opportunity to try a decent range of Korean food. But the types of specialized dishes described in the article were beyond my experience and exactly the kind of thing that gets my heartbeat going. As I started to read off dish names to my girlfriend – gamjatang, san nak ji, cheonggukjang – she got excited too. Since we were only there for a couple days, and we had other things to eat, we settled on the following:
Seongbukdong (if a restaurant doesn’t have a website, I’ll link to another source with contact info)
Jonathan Gold’s description of the braised mackerel won me over, despite not having the most unique dishes on the list. I also wanted to try a rendition of galbi jjim that everyone raved about (yelp is great for identifying popular / house speciality dishes). So this was our first stop with an empty stomach and a skeptical Korean mom who didn’t trust picks from a non-Korean.
The galbi jjim was delicious. Very well executed braise with moist, flavorful meat. The braising liquid was a tad on the sweet side for me and somewhat one dimensional, but you can’t say it didn’t taste good. This surpassed most short rib preparations I’ve had anywhere (though I can vouch for this recipe from Balthazar). This might be an even better introduction to Korean food than BBQ for someone just trying the cuisine.
On the other end of things is the funky, fermented, fishy-in-a-good-way braised mackerel. This dish, shown on the left above, was served in an old metal pot that is apparently quite outdated – the sort of thing you’d find in Korea shortly after the Korean War. The flavors of the dish also seem to harken back to something older. Don’t get this if you don’t like mackerel as it is an intense punch of oily-fish flavor. The long-fermented kim chi braised with it soaks up the fishiness and supplements it perfectly. We loved this dish.
Yu Chun specializes in a dish I’d never had before, but my girlfriend craved: naeng myun. Naeng myun is a cold noodle dish, typically made with buckwheat and very popular in the humid Korean summers. Often speciality restaurants in the US – like this one – serve a full menu beyond their speciality (in Asia they seem more confident and might only have a couple menu items). Don’t make the mistake of ordering these other dishes. You came here for a reason so stay committed – in our case we got 3 variations on naeng myun.
My naeng myun was mul naeng myun, served in an ice cold beef broth. It was literally ice cold with the broth a half-melted slushy consistency. This was a bit disconcerting at first, but actually offered a nice textural counterpoint to the chewy noodles. The other ingredients seemed like a bit of an afterthought, but they should be as the noodles and the broth were the real stars of the show.
As you dive deeper into Korean cuisine, you notice it’s filled with subtle, vegetable-driven flavors. Most people are familiar with the big, bold Korean flavors of spicy kim chi, and marinated BBQ beef, but the best meal I had in Seoul was the Buddhist temple cuisine at Gam Ro Dang which used no spices at all, including garlic and onion. This dish wasn’t quite the same, but the subtlety was apparent in the surprisingly light yet comforting broth. I wished it was a hot summer day just so I could enjoy the soup more.
My girlfriend ordered the bibim naeng myun and you can see above how happy she was with it. This dish comes with a side of the icy broth, but is dressed with spicy sauce – no more delicate flavors here. If you have had bibimbap it’s like that except with naeng myun noodles instead of rice. Apparently in Korea this dish can be made extremely spicy, eating-contest-get-a free-t-shirt-and-plaque-on-the-wall spicy. She might have been hoping for that, but this one was more tame with a nicely balanced flavor more acidic than spicy.
There is obviously a lot more to explore in the LA Korean food scene, but we were extremely happy with both of these picks and if there weren’t 58 others on the list we’d be back soon. I was also lucky enough to enjoy lots of great Korean cooking at home over the last couple weeks:
cheese today 