RESTAURANTS : Hyang Chon Offers Generous Helpings of Delicious Exotic Korean Specialties

Garden Grove Boulevard is the main commercial artery for Orange County’s Korean community, a cultural resource that is gaining in stature with each passing year. At Hyang Chon in tiny Stanton, you can eat deliciously exotic specialties while picking up some fascinating insights about a society largely unrevealed in the West.

During lunch, the restaurant is crowded with groups of young women sharing conversation, assorted casseroles and spicy soups that they ladle delicately from imposing cast-iron pots.

Dinners are largely the province of men, gruff-voiced business types consuming fiery pickles and colorful appetizers, the better to accompany their tall bottles of Korean beer.

The thing to remember about Korea is that the country is bitter cold for much of the year. Consequently, Koreans eat a heavier diet than their Asian neighbors. The cuisine is also extremely hot and spicy, with an abundance of red chile and garlic, which Koreans believe have a warming effect on the body.

Rice is the staple of the Korean table. With it, one can always expect pan cha , side dishes of enormous variety. These side dishes often come with whatever main course you’ve ordered. But at Hyang Chon you get much more for your money. Dishes you would normally have to pay for in other restaurants are served free here, and seconds are yours for the asking.

Gae jang (raw marinated crab) is the restaurant’s signature dish. It appears at every meal. So do the various kimchis, pickled vegetables (cabbage, burdock root, lotus root and carrot), plus raw marinated vegetables (sprouted bean and fresh spinach).

At one meal I received side dishes of fresh shrimp, still in the shell; jap chae (sauteed clear noodles with meat and vegetables); man du (garlicky Korean-style won tons); and pin dae duk (an egg-rich pancake made from mung beans). At another meal the side dishes included myung ran (fresh roe of pollock); subtly sweetened squares of fried tofu; wakame (a Japanese seaweed); soybean soup, similar to Japanese miso; and saeng sun jun (griddled fish in a light egg batter). I’ve never eaten in a more generous Korean restaurant, not even in Los Angeles’ sprawling Koreatown.

Because Hyang Chon is not a traditional barbecue house, you don’t cook your own meat at the table--instead, it’s brought sizzling to the table on iron platters. Personally, I prefer it that way.

Bul ko ki (leaf-like slices of grilled beef) and kalbi (thickly cut beef ribs) are the two most popular dishes, but neither is outstanding here. Bul ko ki is the better of the two, especially when smeared with plenty of go ju jang (the thick red chile paste that Koreans use like ketchup). Kalbi is a disappointment. The ribs are gristly and unwieldy.

The barbecued fish, however, are wonderful. This happens to be the best time to order herring here--it’s currently in season. (Hyang Chon serves it frozen the rest of the year.) There is also an excellent salted corvina--a small, freshwater bass with a delightfully sweet aftertaste. Both the herring and the salted corvina are brought whole to the table (bone in) with crispy skin.

Hyang Chon is one of the area’s only Korean restaurants serving eel, listed on the menu as jangu gui. The quality of the eel is beyond reproach (both conger eel and sea eel are available), but I found one flaw in the preparation. The kitchen is trying to prepare a Japanese-style kabayaki--thick, sweet sauce with a soy base. But the sauce here is overly sweet, better suited to teriyaki.

There are a few miscellaneous dishes not to be missed at this restaurant. Gul jeon , for instance, a fabulous oyster pancake chopped into squares and eaten with a spicy sauce. Nag ji bok kium , fried octopus with vegetables in a hot sauce, is another. I don’t know how they do it, but the octopus comes out of the kitchen as tender as Dover sole.

At lunch, there’s bi bim bap --a large bowl of crudites, minced beef, a fried egg and laver, an edible seaweed that you mix together with rice and eat with a spoon. Do mi maeuntang is a snapper soup with she-crab that puts anything I’ve had in Charleston to shame.

Communication may be a problem at this restaurant, depending on who happens to be working when you visit. Some of the dishes on the menu are transliterated into English, but unexplained--e.g., saeu twigim (a fish stew) or gae jim (a hot pot with crab). A few dishes appear only in Korean.

On my first visit, no one spoke any English, and had it not been for the kindness of an amused Korean customer at the next table, I never would have known what any of them were. After eating a plate of fried kimchi with pork bellies, I’m not sure I’ll ask the next time.

Hyang Chon is inexpensive and a downright steal at lunchtime. Lunch specials are served Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and range in price from $4.50 to $9.25, including all the side dishes. Dinners are $7 to $22.

HYANG CHON

12921 Fern St., Stanton (one building away fron Garden Grove Boulevard), (714) 891-5166

Open every day from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. MasterCard and Visa accepted.