In Garden Grove, Korean restaurant In Chon Won specializes in marinated meats sliced and cooked right in front of you.

Let’s cut to the chase: The main attraction at In Chon Won is barbecue. Not barbecue in the American sense, which usually means chicken or beef or pork on the bone, cooked over a wood or charcoal fire. Korean barbecue means marinated boneless chicken, beef or pork (or seafood) grilled on a gas fire in the middle of your table.

And there’s no question that what you’re getting is fresh, since in most cases what’s going to be grilled is cut up right in front of you. And with the main event--the barbecued short ribs--you get to watch the meat being sliced right off the bone.

Barbecue alone is worth the trip to In Chon Won, but not just because it’s so fresh. The meat has been marinated with garlic and chiles and soy and who knows what else, and the result is downright delicious.

As if that weren’t enough, you’re supposed to take the freshly cooked slices of beef off of the grill and wrap them in lettuce leaves along with a wonderfully complementary sauce of brown beans, garlic and miso. The combination is irresistible.

There are other barbecue possibilities, of course, including chicken (its sesame oil dipping sauce has lots of salt at the bottom, so don’t stir it), pork, boar and squid, the last being the least successful.

Naturally, meals at In Chon Won begin with the table all but covered with small bowls of cabbage kimchi, flavored with garlic and chiles, and other not-so-spicy savory dishes, including julienned daikon pickled in rice vinegar, cucumber pickles, crab in chile sauce, steamed spinach and bean sprouts, dried whiting and slices of almost-sweet gobo (burdock) root. And even before that, there’s a bowl of mildly seasoned julienned beef tripe, which I, not usually fond of tripe, found very pleasant.

The menu doesn’t end with barbecue. This three-room Garden Grove restaurant also offers a welcome variety of Korean dishes from seafood to hot pots to soups. In fact, this, the first week of the Korean lunar New Year, is the traditional time for ttokkuk (here spelled duk guk), a soup containing shirred egg, a taste of beef brisket and the “rice cake” for which the soup is named (it has a dense, gummy texture more like firm custard).

But ttokkuk is so subtly flavored that I prefer ttok manduguk, the less traditional version with added dumplings, also served at In Chon Won. These crescent-shaped ravioli, with their savory meat and vegetable fillings, add texture and zest to this simple soup. But if you do order ttokkuk or ttok manduguk, don’t expect it to come at the beginning of the meal. In much of Asia, soup comes at the end of the meal, as a sort of digestif. Here at In Chon Won, it appeared in the middle, perhaps as a palate cleanser between more highly flavored dishes.

Among the non-barbecue dishes at In Chon Won, my favorite is kalbi jim. This bowl of meaty short ribs braised with carrots and onions has a familiar feeling to it, but it’s more deeply flavored than the European counterparts. On the other hand, sam gye tang, a bland Cornish hen stuffed with rice in broth, reminds me of my grandmother’s Central European boiled chicken, and like hers, it needs salt to perk it up. Yukhwe bibimbap is thick noodle-shaped strands of marinated raw beef. It’s tasty but unfortunately mushy, as often happens with carpaccio, and possibly for the same reason--the meat having been frozen for ease in cutting.

The only dessert is a complimentary red bean ice cream--not nearly as odd as it might sound. It looks like a blueberry ice cream might, except that the beans have a slightly dry texture. Aside from tea, drinks include scotch, beer (OB Korean lager, for example), sake and the Korean rice brandy soju, which tastes like a cross between gin and vodka.

Some Korean barbecue restaurants do themselves up royally with tables made of sliced trees and lots of carved wood on the walls, but In Chon Won is your basic clean, well-lighted place. However, attention to the decor disappears when the table is suddenly laden with bowls of kimchi and the meat starts crackling on the grill in front of you, for all--eyes and ears and noses--will have found a new, more compelling focus.

Portions are generous. Entrees, including side dishes, are $9.95 to $12.95.

BE THERE

In Chon Won, 13321 Brookhurst St., Garden Grove, (714) 539-8989. Open noon to midnight daily. All major cards.