Being very white and quite round-eyed myself (so tasteless), I am hesitant to pass judgment on the authenticity of various Asian cuisines. However, I have it on good word that the eats over at Korea House in the Village Shopping Center are about as real as you’re going to get these days in the American south.
Traditional or not though, it doesn’t much matter because the food is real, real good. As you can tell from the picture, our favorite way to start a dining experience here is with a big goofy-ass mug of Sapporo (look, I know it’s from Japan – get off my case). The best quality about this particular beer being that, like the English will tell you, it is served in a proper 16oz. portion.
Next, it is customary in Korean meals to have soup, known as Gook. It’s usually a clear broth with assorted vegetables and meat bits included. This is called vegetable soup on the menu, but tastes distinctly like a piping hot cup of ham. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We also augmented our soup selection and continued to mix cultures with a bowl of miso soup. Even though it’s not Korean, they do it very well and it makes for a great aperitif.
Possibly my favorite thing about Korean restaurants is the slue of tiny dishes that they call panchan. With every meal they wheel out this cart, absolutely swarming with multiple, delicious, often-times unrecognizable, food stuffs. A server then proceeds to cover your table with 8 to 12 of them. If it were Italian, I guess these would be like a mother-lode of antipasti. But since it’s Korean, it’s called panchan and it’s mandatory.
The dishes vary every time we go, but on this particular occasion we were presented with mung bean sprout salad, marinated potatoes, spinach sautéed in sesame oil, pickled cucumber and crab, spicy tofu, soy-glazed fish cake strips, three types of kim-che, and green beans fried in a sweetened egg batter. Yum. And not that most normal people could, but if you find yourself so inclined, Koreans have an unwritten all-you-can-eat philosophy on panchan and will gladly bring you more of anything you polish off.
Now on to the main dishes. Feeling adventurous (and really, when is she not?) Mme. Pants ordered the Yuk-hoe bi bim bop. The dish is rice and vegetables topped with raw marinated beef and a raw egg yolk. If this doesn’t sound up your alley, then you’re s.o.l. because it’s crazy delicious. Spicy, crunchy, rich and creamy, a blend of hot and cold – it’s really quite an interesting culinary experience. Oh, and I don’t know what kind of crack they put in their rice, but it’s soooo tasty. I would literally come here just to eat the rice.
Slightly tamer, but just as scrumptious was a new tofu dish that they have recently added to the menu. It’s a compilation of super crispy tofu strips topped with a pepper mixture, all resting on lettuce, various pickled things and lots of crack rice. I hope it stays on the line-up, because it freaking rules.
Finally, we finished the whole thing off with absolutely no dessert. That’s right, nothing. Come on, the two of us just ate fifteen bowls of food. Yes, FIFTEEN! Koreans are obviously more American than they realize.
So listen up people, if you’re sitting around hungry and have a hankering for some Asian, cast off the Chinese-Japanese manacles. Get out there and rub some of that beautiful Korean fare all over yourself and revel in a modicum of worldliness. Or some such. Unless of course you’re already going out for Vietnamese, Cambodian, Indonesian, Thai, Malaysian…
Annyeonghi kaseyo and thanks for stopping by.
L. Pants
