Seoul Food for the Adventurous

If you think that all Korean food is the same, you haven’t been to Koreatown lately. While restaurant menus once offered a few standard dishes, the heated competition among the countless barbecues has forced restaurateurs to look beyond their grills. Suddenly the smoke is clearing, and those hungry for more than kalbi have discovered that they can find everything they want--from pub food to health food.

In Seoul, there is a lively area called Myong-dong, which is famous for its tiny one-man, one-specialty food places. These offer casual fare not generally served in larger establishments--simple favorites like hand-cut noodles or crispy mung bean pancakes or kyejang , a kind of Korean ceviche of raw crab cured in spicy chili marinade. Now one part of Los Angeles’ Koreatown is starting to look like a mini Myong-dong.

And it is doing a thriving business catering to the Korean community. But you’d have to read Hangul (Korean script) to understand the menus. While many do have at least partial English menus, I’m haunted by the thought that something good has been left untranslated.

If you have an adventurous palate and want to explore these unusual Korean specialties, the following restaurants are a good place to begin.

Comfort Food

She Gol Jib (pronounced sigolchip) means “country house,” and the restaurant’s rustic interior reminds nostalgic Koreans of a fading bucolic past. Calligraphic rice paper covers the walls. Waitresses bustle by in old-fashioned country style dresses. And She Gol Jib’s heavy hand-painted rice paper menu offers both earthy one-dish meals and an array of popular “snacks.” This is Korean comfort food at its best.

Hoping to make some new discoveries, I asked my Korean guest to order. Our modumjon , a sort of Korean grazing plate, held mild little peppers stuffed with a meat-seafood mixture, dipped in an eggy batter and fried. Along with them came baby oysters, morsels of fish and slices of vegetables all similarly cooked. ( Modumjon isn’t on the English menu so just ask for it.) Our pindaettok , crisp, savory pancakes made from ground mung beans, had decidedly more appeal than their description allows. But it was the array of kimchis --some hot, some salty--punctuating these plainer foods that illustrated the contrasts that give Korean meals their allure.

Around us, solo lunchtime customers were eating from traditional ttukpaegi --deep, wide, flame-proof pottery bowls that keep food hot throughout the meal, a boon during severe Korean winters. On my next visit I’ll eat from one, and order the She Gol Jib special “pork bowl soup.”

She Gol Jib, 3100 West 8th St., No. 101, Los Angeles, (213) 383-8855. Hours: 9:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

Noodles

“High mountains dividing the provinces kept regional foods different before the Korean war. Our chilled noodles are a regional specialty of the Hamhung area,” Daniel Oh, Ham Hung’s proprietor, explained. “We’re the only restaurant in the States to serve this style naengmyon .” Many other restaurants, however, make the buckwheat and potato starch noodles.

The restaurant is large and elegant, not the proverbial tiny noodle shop. First a waitress brought cups of rich-tasting beef broth and tea. The noodles we ordered had a spicy sauce but other versions are mild. Our waitress cut the silky, yards-long noodles with scissors. “These aren’t really that spicy,” my friend said, swishing her noodles around in the red sauce. They still have plenty of kick, though.

Although Ham Hung’s long menu includes familiar barbecue and a number of noodleless Hamhung-regional specialties, at lunchtime the large stainless steel noodle bowls show up on every table.

On the way to the kitchen, Oh showed us huge bags of noodle base, “. . . made from six different kinds of starch, including potato and yam.” He imports cases of fresh garlic from Taiwan. “Chinese garlic tastes different,” he notes. We watched noodles exit from a huge noodle-making machine into a vat of almost-boiling water. The chef, a 25-year veteran of Korean noodle kitchens, swished them around with a pole, fished them out with a net, then plunged them into a large sink of ice and water. “The noodles must be served three minutes after they’re made; we make each serving to order.”

When you lunch at Ham Hung, you know your noodles are fresh.

Ham Hung restaurant, 809 S . Ardmore Ave. (Corner 8th and Ardmore), (213) 381-1865 or 381-1520. Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. daily.

Seafood

Go around to the back of Hang Goo Restaurant and enter through the parking lot like everyone else. Don’t let the locked heavy wooden front doors or the staff’s reserved puzzlement (they thought we were in the wrong restaurant) deter you from eating some of the city’s best young crab soup. As soon as you begin to empty your bowl everyone will be smiling. They’ll bring you more tea and ask “how’s everything?”

Everything will be fine. The soup is lightly seasoned with red and green fresh chiles, a touch few restaurants offer. The broth is briny, the crab meat sweet and the young crab turns out to be female with gorgeous coral roe.

Our $10 sashimi tray held 11 varieties of fish, including a little cup of cod roe caviar in the center. A generous plate of cockles in their shells came alongside. The large basket of lettuce leaves is used to eat the sashimi Korean style. Wrap it around slices of fish with a bit of shredded white radish and a dab of one of the hot sauces or a sliver of fresh garlic. The usual wasabi and soy sauce are also provided.

Convinced you like the food, everyone will wish you a warm farewell, waving you out as if you were long-lost friends.

Hang Goo Seafood, 1106 S . Western Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 733-2474. Hours: 11:45 a.m.-midnight daily, excluding the first Sunday in the month.

Tofu

Soon or “pure” tofu is the soft variety, made without any added coagulant. And Beverly Soon Tofu restaurant devotes its entire menu to dishes made with it.

The waitress asked us how we wanted our tofu spiced. But when we ordered medium

rather than mild she shook her head. “Too hot” she admonished. She was right. The mild has plenty of zip and you can always regulate any version with some kochujang --red chili and bean paste--from the jar on the table.

Ever the tourist, I ordered the “combination” tofu while my friend decided on the baby clam tofu. (The other varieties are oyster, beef, pork and seaweed.) After pouring special iced tea made from roasted corn into drinking bowls and setting out three varied kimchis , our waitress brought the tofu in individual cast-iron pots. These were so hot that the sauce was boiling violently as she set them on the table. She then ceremoniously broke a raw egg into the center of each and demonstrated how to cook it by spooning the boiling sauce over it. “Do not stir the egg,” she directed. Amazingly, a three-minute egg results if you let it sit.

This was one of the best Korean meals I’ve had in Los Angeles. The tofu, so fresh it was like creamy clouds, absorbed the flavor of the tiny baby clams and spicy broth. Every now and then the waitress came by with a huge teapot to refill the smaller one on the table.

All this was served in a simple setting with tables made from slices of trees. The cost of a meal runs about $4.65 per person. And if spicy food is not to your liking, try the plain soon tofu and dip it into the sesame-soy sauce sitting on the table.

Beverly Soon Tofu restaurant, 4653 1/2 W . Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 856-0368. Hours: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. daily.

Octopus

I suppose if you lived in Korea, a squid and octopus specialty restaurant might seem as familiar as a California pizza place in Los Angeles. But discovering Moo Kyo Dong’s smiling octopus-illustrated sign here in Los Angeles is enough to inspire the curiosity of even the most intrepid restaurant explorer. My Korean friend recommended the spicy pan-fried baby octopus. It’s the third item down and not translated into English. (Ask for tchukkumi pokkum --spicy pan-fried young octopus.)

Most octopus is tough, but there was nothing rubbery about this amazingly tender octopus. But it was, as my companion put it, “one of the hottest dishes I’ve ever had.” She consumed half a bowl of rice in three bites in an attempt to soothe her palate. I dabbed a morsel on the lettuce garnish. “The trick,” I illustrated, “is to blot off some of the sauce. Then it’s just right.” Fortunately, all but one of the accompanying kimchis were cooling: sweet fruity slices of mangos, salty turnip floating in a cool liquid, and a tangle of bright orange carrot and seaweed.

We also selected “egg stew,” the best fish roe soup I’ve tried so far. Roe in the sack had been split, turned and gently poached. The vegetable-laden soup with dainty, tender zucchini slices was a perfect match for the spicy octopus.

Moo Kyo Dong, 212 1/2 S . Western Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 383-6046. Hours: 5-10 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.

Dumplings

Ddo Wa dumpling restaurant specializes in mandu . Since my last visit, a few uptown touches have been added. The tender dumpling coverings are still made by hand, but the filling seems even lighter and better than before. And now a portfolio of glossy colored photos illustrates each dish.

Ddo Wa’s chef prepares mandu three ways. The fillings are the same, yet each rendition has its own character: the crisply fried mandu seems like pastry, the steamed mandu seems like a firm meatball and the mandu in a luscious soup, garnished with fluffy scrambled egg and garlic chives, meltingly tender. The combination plate and Korean-style sushi are better elsewhere but no one else makes Korean dumplings this good. Ddo wa means “come back again”--and you will want to.

Ddo Wa restaurant, 3542 West 3rd St . , (213) 387-1288. Hours: 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

Health Food

“All these dishes,” explained my guest Mrs. Kim, glancing at the menu on the wall, “are thought to have health-giving properties.” Watching Koreans put away a feast of marinated red meat, salty kimchi and white rice, one might not guess they have a preoccupation with eating for strength and vitality. They do, though, and the Mountain Cafe offers popular vitality foods 24 hours a day. This isn’t “health food” as we know it--there’s no brown rice or bran--but they do serve fresh ginseng juice.

My chicken soup (No. 1 on the menu), was no ordinary Jewish mother’s remedy. A whole game hen stuffed with sticky rice and fresh ginseng root was simmered until its meat almost fell from the bones, and the sticky rice thickened the broth. Nestled in the stuffing were pine nuts, a few tiny garlic cloves, even a date. The bland soup was unsalted, but a little dish of salt and pepper with roasted sesame seed and a mound of green onion come alongside. (Taste the four styles of intense kimchi and the appeal of the blandness will instantly become clear.)

“This is always prepared in spring with game hen-size chickens that have hatched in February. It’s supposed to fortify one for the hot summer to come,” Mrs. Kim offered.

Mrs. Kim ordered kongnamulkuk , a refreshing cold soy-milk soup with fresh noodles. “In Korea we make this at home when the soybeans are freshly picked and the taste is best.” A man at the next table was relishing the “rich man’s breakfast”--abalone chowder. This chuk , or rice porridge, is served with a soft-cooked egg. And the wall menu also offers haemultang , a seafood and sea-vegetable soup, recommended for pregnant women.

Mountain Cafe, 3064 West 8th St . , Los Angeles, (213) 480-8791. Hours: Open daily, 24 hours.

Goat

Curried goat seems right at home on an Indian menu. You expect to find it in Caribbean cuisine. Birria is popular in Mexico, and even chef Lydia Shire served “Young Goat in Pastry” in the tony Gardens restaurant. But goat isn’t a meat I’d ordinarily associate with Korean food, and I was flabbergasted to find a Korean restaurant, Kong Joo, specializing in black goat.

“You know,” my friend said, tasting a succulent morsel, “in Korea, black goat is often eaten by people recovering from a serious illness. It is supposed to give you strength. It is very popular in Korea, and restaurants even specialize in it.”

Printed boldface in Hangul (on an otherwise translated menu) are the black goat dishes; non-Korean speakers will need to point. We ordered the barbecue and soup/stew to try each style; both were spicy and fine, the meat mild tasting and tender. Both versions included strips of mild red pepper and a garnish of perilla leaves and crunchy perilla seeds. Kong Joo’s menu also offers a selection of familiar dishes, but when we were there, most everyone seemed to be eating goat.

Kong-Joo restaurant, 3029 W . Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 737-9487. Hours: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

Pig Knuckle

“ Joek bark is a most delicious Korean delicacy,” the cafe’s menu proclaims (it’s pronounced chokpal). A discriminating friend had validated this, so I decided to see for myself why pig’s knuckle is so popular in Korea.

It wasn’t quite what I’d imagined. Apart from the pork bones beneath the single layer of meat, the heaped platter of neatly overlapping half-moon-shaped meat slices seemed like a familiar deli plate. I dipped each slightly chewy slice timidly into the sauce of salted baby shrimp with chiles--the perfect touch. And the kimchi livens the meat’s flavor, much as pickles and sauerkraut do pastrami or corned beef.

On my next visit, I came armed with two Korean friends. “Let’s order something not on the English menu,” I suggested. They studied the carved wall menu and ordered kimchipokkum, pork slices stir-fried with kimchi and tofu squares, and another dish of “bay top shells,” a shellfish with raw vegetables in a hot pepper sauce. Both were excellent--and definitely palate-igniting.

Our mild soups however, were offered in English. A popular “morning after soup,” haejangkuk, a Korean-style menudo, is a rich broth that is the product of long-simmered marrow bones. The soup is unsalted; you season it from a bowl of coarse salt on the table. Mixed into the broth are tiny wisps of tripe and vegetables.

Komtang, another marrow-bone soup, is topped with thin omelet strips and vegetables. “Koreans eat so many soups,” I ventured. “Yes,” my friend replied, “and slurping is acceptable.”

L.A. Joek Bark, 304 N . Western Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 463-1784. Hours: 10 a.m.-4 a.m., daily.