Getting Chummy With Ok-Dol Korean B.B.Q.

Part of my wardrobe is now perfumed with the aroma of grilled meat, the consequence of eating at Ok-Dol Korean B.B.Q. This restaurant is very small and when the table grills are fired up, smoke and sizzle dominate the atmosphere.

Here you can grill not only the usual beef, pork and chicken but also pork belly, beef heart and tongue. Order belly and you get large, thick, fatty slices that look like bacon. The slices come to the table frozen. On the grill, they do a sort of vanishing act. Bigger pieces shrink to crunchy little tidbits and taste best folded in a lettuce leaf along with a dab of hot bean paste. You also get a bowl of sesame oil and salt for dipping.

Order certain combinations of meat--say, beef rib eye and chicken--and the waitress may frown. This doesn’t mean that you have committed some culinary infraction. The meats simply require different grills. Rib eye and pork belly cook on a solid grill. Chicken, pork meat and beef ribs take a perforated grill. The solution? You cook one meat at the table while the other is grilled in the kitchen.

Barbecue is Ok-Dol’s specialty, but I also tried such things as broiled corvina, blue crab soup, kimchi soup and rice in a stone pot. The corvina--a whole fish--was crisp, plain and pleasant, in contrast to the spiciness that dominates a meal here. If you order steamed corvina, you get fish covered with what looks like very hot sauce.

The problem with the crab soup was extracting the meat from the shell. It’s a messy job and you wind up with barely a taste. The spicy broth was good, though, and contained enough vegetables and tofu to make up for the scanty amount of crab.

Kimchi soup is just what it sounds like--hotly seasoned red broth full of cabbage. The addition of tofu turns it into a well-rounded, robust main dish. Stone-pot rice is the Korean bibim bap , a mixture of rice, vegetables, meat and seaweed topped with a raw egg yolk to stir into the mixture. The heavy black pot is hot enough to cook the egg.

A meal here has so many components that it may be impossible to get them all on the small tables. In addition to platters of meat for grilling and any extra courses such as soup or fish that you may order, there will be bowls of clear beef broth, plain white rice and a salad composed of lettuce and long shreds of green onion, flecked red with chile. You must also make room for 10 bowls of the little “relishes” that traditionally accompany Korean meals. These include such nibbles as marinated bean sprouts, kimchi, seasoned eggplant, cucumber, a bland gray-white translucent slice of something the waitress called Korean “Jell-O” and Korean “pizza” (a soft pastry dotted with red and green vegetables).

Prices are a little lower than at some Korean restaurants. Barbecued pork, which is excellent and very spicy here, is $9.50 on the dinner menu, and the price includes the soup, rice, salad and collection of relishes. Chicken is also $9.50, and beef dishes are $10.50. Ok-Dol also has a weekday lunch special in which the price of barbecued beef, chicken or pork drops to $5.50.

Ok-Dol Korean B.B.Q., 698 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles . (213) 385-1802. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Parking available.