Harvesting the Sea--Korean Style

It isn’t difficult to understand Koreans’ zealous appetite for seafood. All but the Chinese border in North Korea is surrounded by ocean, and its most valuable harvests come from the sea, which dominates life on the mountainous peninsula.

As in Japan, fresh fish is eaten raw, but Korean sashimi is earthier and more varied than Japanese. It always comes on a huge plate blanketed with shredded white radish, and at least eight varieties of fish. The custom is to wrap sashimi morsels in lettuce with a few crunchy radish shreds, fresh hot pepper slices or raw garlic slivers. For dipping, there’s a lusty red, hot-sweet sauce, a rich brown bean paste or the familiar soy sauce with wasabi. Some diners forgo the wrapping ceremony altogether and dip the fish directly into the sauces.

While the sashimi is being polished off, a variety of other dishes is brought out. These may include a tang , a fairly spicy seafood soup; another might be a tchige --similar to tang but more like a stew--or a crispy, salt-broiled whole fish.

I’ve been told that many Los Angeles Korean restaurants are similar to the small, Spartan eating places at Susan sijang, Seoul’s largest public seafood market. The tiny restaurants draw a discriminating crowd intent on eating the freshest fish. Surrounding them in the marketplace, under the glare of bare dangling light bulbs, hundreds of vendors peddle every imaginable sea creature. Some have a few stools and an oil drum table for customers who want to eat live oysters or exquisitely fresh squid on the spot. And someone from a nearby stall will bring them a beer.

Yeon Po Seafood, on the southwest corner of Olympic and Vermont, re-creates the market feeling with large decorative aquariums and a refrigerated case to display its fish. It is my favorite place for hoedopap. If you’ve ever had chirashi sushi then this dish won’t seem too foreign. Translated as rice topped with vegetables and raw fish, it is one of the best items on the menu. An enormous bowl of rice is strewn with shredded lettuce and cucumbers, and topped with three kinds sashimi--tuna, halibut and giant clam--each cut into a small dice. You pour on the spicy, slightly sweet red sauce from one of those old-fashioned syrup containers on the table and mix the whole thing up like a salad. One can easily regulate spiciness and add soy sauce too. The effect of cool cucumber, starchy rice, salty-sweet fish and that sauce together in your mouth is like a complex musical arrangement.

In addition to a generous sashimi plate--enough for two or three for only $10--Yeon Po has many other inspired specialties. Try the light, spicy crab soup made with half of a female crab and its roe or a rich-tasting marinated, broiled eel. The eel is brushed with a peppery coating somewhat like those delicious “blackened” Louisiana-style foods. And kulbossam, raw oysters that you wrap up in cabbage with slices of pork and radish kimchi , is another marvel of contrasting tastes and textures.

Incheon Seafood on Olympic Boulevard also has exceptional items to recommend. We ordered a tang of fish roe (on the menu called fish egg stew). The spicy broth, heaped with fresh vegetable chunks, was filled with huge slices of roe in the sack resembling a sliced sausage. And Incheon offers many sauteed dishes you don’t find on other menus, including pan-fried green onion and oysters.

This is also a good place to order kejang (translated as fresh crab Korean hot sauce and spices). The raw crab marinated in a scalding spice mixture is fresh and meaty here. But not every item is exotically spiced: steamed whole crab or a plate of unshelled steamed shrimp come plain and simple. These go perfectly with the many spicy side dishes that arrive at your table.

P’altokangsan has what I consider the freshest sashimi and a staff with the best all-around cooking skills. The codfish soup, which also contains fresh clams, shrimp and vegetables, helped bring me to this conclusion. The fish is cooked au point and its briny broth is perfectly clean tasting--spiciness can be regulated to your taste. Mixed Seafood Soup, another version (for 2 or more), looked sumptuous as it was being carried to another table. Another plus: just-shucked oysters with a tangy, slightly spicy sauce, or large broiled clams are sold by the piece.

A tiny Japanese-style sushi bar is tucked into the back corner of the restaurant but most people seemed to prefer crowding around tables with platters of sashimi and the whole panorama of sauces and kimchis , eating Korean-style.

One thing to remember when exploring these restaurants: Bring along the address. Although the menus are translated, most of the restaurant signs are in Hangul.

Yeon Po Sea Food, 1001 S. Vermont Ave., 389-7247. Open 4 p.m.-2 a.m. daily. Hoedopap, $6.95; sashimi, $10 to $20; other dishes average about $7.

Incheon Restaurant, 3177 W. Olympic Blvd. 738-8717. Open 10 a.m.-4 a.m. daily. Sashimi, $10 to $25; other dishes average $6 to $7.

P’altokangsan, 212 1/2 S. Western Ave., 383-6046. Open 3 p.m.-3 a.m. daily. Sashimi $12 to $25; other dishes average $7.