Dream a Dream of BBQ

Dream Korean BBQ, at the corner of First and Western (in the spot that used to be Suhrabal), is one of my favorite of the all you can eat (AYCE) Korean BBQ spots. They have three distinct menus that offer different BBQ choices:  Four items for $10.99 per person; 15 items for $18.99 per person and topping out at a choice of 22 items for $24.99 for person.  All of them come free with a salad bar buffet, except that it's an extra $3.99 if you order the $10.99 at dinner (it's free at lunch with that menu too).

I always get the $10.99 menu.  The salad bar is a mix of banchan, traditional salad fixings, fruit and other assorted appetizers like California rolls and a really good tempura fried squid.  The noodle dishes, japche and spicy vermicelli, are particularly good.

For the $10.99 BBQ  menu, you can get brisket, bulgogi, pork belly and/or chicken bulgogi. The brisket is my favorite, paper-thin, lusciously fatty and good quality for the price.  Pork belly is also good, bulgogi is okay, and I've never made it to the chicken bulgogi. My MO is to just keep ordering brisket until I'm full.

They also do a very nice gyeran jjim (steamed egg). Often a throw-away dish, the Dream steamed egg, which arrives mid-way through the meal, has succulent flavors of pork and sesame oil with a perfect light, fluffy, souffle-like texture. They must cook it with pork broth. This may be one of my favorite egg dishes in town, and it's a perfect contrast to some good, plentiful grilled meat.

Dream Korean BBQ
100 S Western Ave

Los Angeles, CA 90004
(213) 388-7668

Recent Eats: Shabu Hyang

Old timers might remember when this was a food blog. Well, it's still called Recent Eats, and I still eat plenty, so I thought I'd get back into the habit of sharing some of my food finds. Lately, I've been enjoying the shabu shabu at Shabu Hyang at the corner of Wilshire and Western.

At Shabu Hyang, you can choose between regular and spicy broth or get  a half and half order which comes with a partitioned bowl to separate the broth. There are two basic orders. One is the traditional shabu shabu with huge cabbage and chard leaves, various mushrooms, bean sprouts and fish cake. The other is a spring roll which comes with rice paper wrappers assorted veggie toppings. Both come with beautifully marbled beef and a variety of sauces.  If you're there with a group, get both traditional and spring roll for maximum variety.

Noodles & Rice cooked in the shabu broth.

Once your done with the shabu shabu, there is a noodle course and a rice porridge, both cooked in the same broth and with whatever meat and veggie odds and ends are left in your dish.  The rice porridge is great, particularly if cooked in the spicy broth. It's a mix of rice, seaweed, pumpkin and egg.  A lovely end to the meal.






 
Shabu Hyang
3807 Wilshire Blvd., #120
Los Angeles, CA  90010
(213) 384-5464

And if you're interested in more of my recent eats, I've reactivate an old Instagram account and plan to use it mostly for food pics. My Twitter will remain spirits focused.

Competitive Mandoo at Olympic Noodle

I've never been a huge fan of Korean dumplings or mandoo. The typical mandoo is a huge things with an overly glutinous dough and a flavorless filling of ground meat and vegetables. I'd been meaning to head to Olympic Noodle for a while to try the chicken noodle soop (gook soo) and mandoo.

The mandoo are available boiled, pan fried or steamed. We got some steamed and pan fried and some boiled in soup. They were smaller than the usual mandoo, which is a good thing as it improves the filling to wrapper ratio, and the filling actually had flavor. I enjoyed both the steamed and fried versions. While these were by far the best mandoo I've had, they still didn't even come close to the average quality of Chinese dumplings I can get in the San Gabriel Valley, so it was hard for me to get too excited. When it comes to dumplings, I'm just not hot on mandoo, but if you're going to eat them, eat them at Olympic Noodle.

The gook soo consisted of a nice rich broth with a good dose of garlic which came to life with a sprinkle of salt. The hand pulled noodles were good but a bit on the soft side.

Olympic Noodle
4008 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
(323) 931-0007

Jonathan Gold's Gift to Koreatown: Sun Ha Jang

Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold's last big project for the LA Weekly before moving (back) to the LA Times was a massive paean to my neighborhood. His 60 Korean Dishes Every Angeleno Should Know is a tour de force of culinary completeness, showing the type of mastery of a single cuisine and ability to both highlight well known stars and seek out lesser known treasures that had been absent from many of Gold's recent compilations which seemed like so much warmed over retreads of earlier work.

As I gazed through the list though, one thing spoke to me: Duck Bulgogi. I rolled the phrase around in my brain thinking there was no finer combination of words in any language. Duck Bulgogi showed the promise of gamy meat grilling in its own fat, like a Korean confit with chili sauce. My usual policy is to hold off for at least two weeks before going to anything reviewed by Gold to avoid the "Gold rush" that occurs at an establishment subsequent to his reviews, but I couldn't resist the pull of Duck Bulgogi, and besides, with a full 60 reviews in one issue, the Gold rush effect would likely be muted.

Finding Sun Ha Jang, the site of the dish of my dreams, was a bit challenging. It lies in an Olympic Boulevard strip mall, just east of Crenshaw, but the only English is in very small print on the strip mall sign post. Luckily, I had my Korean speaking daughter with me, but while the English name doesn't appear on the actual restaurant, there are pictures of ducks on the windows, so just drive down the street and look for the ducks. Sure enough, the place was pretty much empty when I got there (though I had come early on a Sunday evening, just in case).

Duck bulgogi is a bit of a misnomer, at least based on my assumptions about bulgogi. The dish you want is listed as "roasted duck" on the menu, and it's unseasoned, more like a duck version of the roast gui you can get at Dong Il Jang and similar establishments than seasoned beef bulgogi.

As usual when tackling a new Korean BBQ dish, I let the waitress set us up. She used a wad of kimchi to plug the grease drain in the pan. "Not for eating," she told us. Then she lit the flame and put the duck slices on with a handful of garlic cloves. That's when the magic happens. The duck cooks down and releases massive amounts of fat which roast the garlic. Most of the panchan provided are actually for directly accompanying the duck as opposed to eating alone. There is a lettuce and onion salad, scallions with chili sauce and wonderful pickled onions (they need to get those into some cocktails pronto). You take a piece of duck, dab on some chili sauce, and then scoop up some combination of salad, scallions and pickled onions with your chop sticks, letting it all roll around on your tongue. The acid of the onions and the heat of the chili cut the pure fat of the duck and make for a balanced combination. On top of that, the little slivers of duck fat that fall off the leaner meat fry in their own grease until they become delightfully crispy little duck chicharrones.

As with roast gui, after the meat is gone, the waitress makes fried rice from the remaining fat, meat bits and panchan. As my wife often asks, is there anything that's not better fried in duck fat? Well, I'm not sure I know the answer, but fried rice is definitely better in duck fat, the rice soaking up the intense duck flavor, the grains blending with the little bits of fried fat. It's like grease with texture.

We ordered some regular beef bulgogi as well and it was very good (barbecued in the kitchen), but the thing to get hear is the roast duck and that's what every table was eating.

It's an amazing meal, though not for those who shy away from fat or worry about the state of their artery blockages. Thanks to Jonathan Gold, and good luck to him at the Times.


Sun Ha Jang
4032 W. Olympic Boulevard.
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(323) 634-9292

Going Wako for Fried Pork: Wako Donkasu

It just so happened that while I was on a fried pork binge (albeit a Oaxacan one), Jonathan Gold published a review of a Koreatown tonkatsu restaurant. I'm a big fan of tonkatsu, the Japanese, panko breaded, deep fried pork cutlet. The stuff is ubiquitous here in Koreatown, but most of it is sub-par - tough, dry meat, fried to death and buried in goopy sauce. But not so Wako Donkasu.

Wako Donkasu, on Olympic a few blocks east of Normandie, is a mostly Japanese style donkatsu. The only trace of Korean cuisine are two very small but very good panchan: a tangy radish kimchi and a wonderfully garlicky dish of sliced, pickled jalapeños.

The pork is tender and juicy with a light, crispy crust. For the sauce, you are initially given a bowl of freshly roasted sesame seeds with a wooden pestle to pulverize them with. The waiter then dumps the sauce on top and you mix the sesame seeds throughout, which gives the sweet and fruity (but not overly gloppy) sauce a nice nutty fragrance.

We also tried the fried New York strip which was also excellent. It was fried just as carefully as the pork but packed in even more flavor and had better contrast when combined with the sauce.

The combo comes with a fried protein (pork, beef or chicken), a pile of cabbage salad, soba noodles, a fried shrimp and a fried potato ball (think fried mashed potatoes). The soba was fine, but nothing special. The things to get here are the fried meats.

This place is dangerously close to where I work and live. I see lots of fried pork in my future.


Wako Donkasu
2904 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(213) 387-9256

Korean Country Cod 'n Dumplings: Mapo

Mapo is a Korean country style kitchen at Sixth and Normandie. The meal starts with a full dozen panchan, including at least three kimchi variations. This is one of those cases of so much panchan, you barely need to order anything, but you should.

I immediately honed in on the braised cod, which reminded me of the similar mackerel dish at Seongbukdong, and it is like a less funky version of that dish. The cod is braised to a point of tenderness that you don't see that much in Western cooking, soft oily pieces spill out, but be careful, it's full of pesky little bones. Large slices of daikon soak up the spicy, salty sauce which is actually quite mild compared to the rich, pungent version at Seongbukdong. It's a milder, but just as wonderful dish.

The hand made noodles are the thing here and the soup with pulled dough morsels is filled with a handmade spaetzle or chicken 'n dumplings type noodle. These were very tasty, but I bet if you had leftovers (we didn't) they would soak up the soup and become plump and even more wonderful.

The various grilled mackerel dishes also looked very good; we'll check those out on the next visit.

Mapo
3611 West 6th St.
Los Angeles, CA 90020
(213)736-6668

Black Cod in Red Sauce at KangNam

I was glad to finally make it to KangNam on Olympic at the western edge of Koreatown. They have a wide and varied menu with BBQ and sushi, but seem to specialize in home-style dishes. It's sort of a less funky version of the food at Seongbukdong.

The fried oyster pancakes had a nice oyster flavor but were a bit too doughy; I would have liked to see a lower oyster to dough ratio. The boiled short rib is actually braised and served in a sweet jus with apples, cherries and chestnuts. The meat was tender, but the sauce was a bit thin. The KangNam version only made me yearn for the bolder braised kalbi at Seongbukdong.

But the spicy boiled black cod with mixed vegetables was a home run. The dish is a braised code with scallions, rice cake, tofu, daikon and assorted vegetables in a thick Korean chili paste braising sauce. The cod itself was cooked perfectly, maintaining its buttery texture while soaking up the spice from the sauce. The assorted accompaniments added a wide variety of textures and the sauce was sippable by the spoonful.

They also do a good, somewhat spicy chapchae (the ubiquitous Korean noodle dish that we always order for the kids).


KangNam
4103 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
(323) 937-1070

Koreatown Gets Burgers: Kalbi Burger

My home neighborhood of Koreatown is a food mecca for many different genres of cuisine, including Oaxacan, Central American and a million varieties of Korean. What we lack are good burger joints. Ancient Cassell's keeps on truckin' with their big, meaty patties and excellent patty melts, but they close at 4:00. When the burger craving strikes at dinner or later, we have to haul ourselves up to Umami or Fatburger in Hollywood. The recently opened Kalbi Burger just might change all of that.

Nestled into a busy strip mall at Wilshire and Wilton (valet parking is free so don't sweat it), Kalbi Burger opened a few weeks ago. Undoubtedly inspired by Kogi, their house specialty is the Kalbi Burger, a burger made 50/50 from ground chuck and kalbi in a barbecued kalbi sauce. The Seoul Burger is a regular ground chuck burger that includes sauteed kimchee. All of the burgers had good flavor, good use of condiments and a homemade-style bun that stood up nicely. I especially liked the rich flavor of the kalbi burger; I could definitely taste kalbi with every bite, but that could have been the influence of the sauce as well. The burgers are cooked medium well, which is a bit too much for me. I didn't notice until after I ordered that you could request a different doneness.

The menu includes other theme burgers, a build-your-own burger option and hot dogs. Sides include a number of different french fry options and onion rings. We tried the salt and vinegar fries. The fries were very nicely fried to a crisp, golden brown, just the way I like 'em. They had a subtle malt vinegar flavor and specks of sea salt that gave them the perfect amount of salt.

The place is new and they are still smoothing out some rough spots in the ordering process, but the service is very friendly, and the owner is out front talking to customers with a contagious enthusiasm for his recipes.

Kalbi isn't going to compete for one of the best burgers in the City, but it's a welcome addition to the neighborhood, and I'm sure I'll be headed back when the burger craving strikes.


Kalbi Burger
4001 Wilshire Blvd., Unit E
Los Angeles, CA 90010
(213)738-7898

Eat Hodori and Donate to Computers for Kids

I always like to see a restaurant giving back to the community, and Hodori Restaurant, the popular 24 hour Korean spot on Vermont just south of Olympic, has been raising money to buy computers for the local public schools. They did a number of events for the schools and have a donation box up on the counter where customers can donate to the cause.

The cuisine at Hodori is pretty standard Korean comfort food: donkatsu, bi bim bap, assorted barbecue dishes, etc. Most of the food is on the just okay level, but I'm a sucker for the chicken soup with hand cut noodles. It's got a great, rich chicken flavor and the noodles are nicely chewy. Check it out and help out some local kids.


Hodori
1001 S Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(213) 383-3554

True Blood Part 2: 8th Street Soondae

In my second Korean bloods sausage excursion I hit up 8th Street Soondae, alternatively titled, according to the menu, 8Ga Soon Dae, 8th Korean Sausage Restaurant and Korean Sweet Rice Blood 8th Sausage Restaurant; there is no English on the storefront, but it is in the corner of a strip mall on the north west corner of Hoover and 8th Street.

The menu is nearly identical to that of Western Soondae, which I reviewed last week. I again had the soon dae plate with sausage and "assort pork intestin." The dish was two dollars more expensive than Western ($11.99 vs. $9.99) but had a bit more of the pork stomach.

I definitely preferred the plate at Western Soondae. The sausage at 8th Street was nearly the same in flavor and appearance but was drier then the very moist Western sausage. I missed the moistness of the sausage innards and the soft but stretchy quality in the casing at Western, which made it taste freshly made. The sausage is also served with the same accompaniments used at Western: pork stomach, tongue and liver. The tongue, which I really enjoyed at Western Soondae was also much too dry at 8th street. The liver was equally dried out at both establishments and the stomach seemed fine at both.

Soondae is fairly bland so condiments are important. Both restaurants served salt with them as well as a fish sauce and chili condiment, but the sauce at Western was a bit more funky and had more character, making it a better foil to the strong offal flavors in the dish.

The winner of this soondae match was Western. Thanks to the Chowhounds who pointed me to the two contenders. Oh and there are a few others out there I will be trying, but for now, I'm going to take a break and let the iron content of my blood ease back down a bit.

8th Street Soondae
2703 W. 8th Street, #D
Los Angeles, CA 90005
(213) 487-0038

Ho Dduk at the Green Market

You can have your Sprinkles Truck and other mobile dessert stands. Is there anything better than a hot rice pancake with sweet syrup? The Korean dessert ho dduk has long been available from a truck labeled Koo's Grill outside the California Market on Western and Fourth Street (known locally as the "green California Market" to distinguish it from the "red California Market" on Beverly). The pancake has that nice, stretchy texture you get from rice flour, like a flattened, fried mochi, but beware your first bite, because that syrup is slightly hotter than molten lava. At a dollar a pop, these babies may be the the best food truck deal around.

Koo's Grill
Outside the Green California Market
450 South Western Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90020

True Blood: Western Soondae

Every once in a while I get a vampyric blood lust, a taste for blood sausage that can only be sated by a fresh kill. Usually, I satisfy these gothic hunger pangs with the Latin American version of blood sausage, morcilla. La Fonda Anteoqueño does a particularly excellent version. Occasionally, I'll also get one of the Middle Eastern variants. Lately though, I've been hitting up Korean joints for the Korean blood sausage known as soondae.

Western Soondae lies in a strip mall at the corner of Sixth and Western. It's hard not to like a place that bills itself as a "Korean Sweet Rice Blood Wurst-Sausage Restaurant." I mean, talk about getting it all out on the table.

I went in for the small soon dae plate. For ten bucks, you get a large pile of blood sausage, I'm talking six or seven sausages, plus what the menu describes as "assort pork intestin," which actually appeared to be small servings of liver, tongue and a third unidentified offal which may have been heart or even stomach, but in any case had some muscle quality, which means it probably was not intestine.

Soondae tends to be milder than morcilla in terms of spices, and the Western Soondae was very mild, though it had a nice, straightforward blood sausage taste. It was stuffed with cellophane-type noodles instead of rice, and the texture was fairly soft though not mushy.

The tongue and unidentified offal were both very nice, and again, very straightforward, but the liver was far too dry. I like my livers moist.

The specialty at soondae is soondae kuk, which is a blood sausage soup, but I was more in the mood for the big pile of sausages. I also was intrigued by the oyster bosam on the menu; perhaps on a return trip.

Western Soondae makes a good, solid blood sausage and certainly gives you bang for the buck, but I can't say I was blown away by it. In the coming weeks, we'll see how it stacks up to some soondae competitors.

Western Soondae
543 S. Western Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90020
(213) 389-5288

And another location at:
809 S. Ardmore Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90005
(213) 381-1520

Beyond Skewered Genetalia at Feng Mao

Lying on a fairly empty stretch of Olympic in Koreatown is an only-in-LA rarity, a northern Chinese skewer house aimed at a Korean clientele. Feng Mao looks like any other Korean restaurant with table-top charcoal grills, fairly typical panchan and a TV tuned to the Korean language channel, but open the menu and you enter a worm hole which brings you to the northern plains of China.

Skewered meats are the specialty here, and pretty much any meat can end up on the skewer, including lamb, beef and plenty of innards; a cumin-heavy spice mix is provided as the condiment for the skewers. The skewers are cooked on the stove top and, as with the real charcoal BBQ houses, will leave you feeling (and smelling) a bit smoky after the meal.

As the cuisine hails from the mostly Muslim areas of China, lamb is the first thing listed, and something to definitely get. The basic order is ten skewers. Small lamb cubes are separated by chunks of pure fat. Eat the two together and it's the perfect mouthful of lean mean and juicy fat. Beef skewers were also excellent and a bit less dry than the lamb. If you like chicken hearts, you should get an order as they crisp up nicely over the coals and give you a good juicy pop when you bite into them.

Most reviewers have been excited by the bull penis, but other than the chance to have an Andrew Zimmern moment and/or make a series of juvenile jokes, I don't see any good reason to order it. It's thinly sliced, width-wise and is mostly cartilage, so while it has a bit of a nice crunch, there's not too much flavor.

There are lots of other enticing skewers on the map, including various liver and kidneys for which I will definitely want to return, not to mention the chance to taste fake dog meat, if that's something you've been dying to do.

We also ordered dumplings and pork buns, both of which were good. I especially liked the buns, sort of a hybrid between Chinese pan-fired buns and Korean mandoo. Scallion pancakes were fairly standard. In the end, though, this place is really about the skewers.

Feng Mao is one of Koreatown's more unique eateries, so go, skewer and be happy.

Feng Mao
3901 W Olympic Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90019
(323) 935-1099

Real Korean Tacos at Kobawoo House

A few weeks ago, I panned the ultra-hip Kogi Korean taco truck, but that's not to say that there is no place in this world for Korean tacos. In fact, there is an authentic antecedent to the Kogi truck and its name is bossam. Bossam is the specialty at Kobawoo, a popular Korean restaurant on Vermont, just south of Wilshire (in the same strip mall as BBQ Chicken).

Bossam is barbecued pork belly (they cook it for you) served with a turnip kimchi, wonderful pickled peppers and another fermented product (collectively described on the menu as "spicy mixture all around"). The meat and spicy mixture is served with thin, round slices of a large radish, like a daikon but milder tasting. You place a slice of pork, kimchi and assorted condiments into the radish tortilla and eat it like a taco. The combination is spicy, savory and just a tad sweet from the pork marinade, with ample pork fat from the belly. These were just delightful. The menu also includes a version with fish. The medium sized order was plenty for two people.

Kobawoo is also known for its pin dae duk, Korean seafood pancake. Their version is a very large, thick disk with ample squid, shrimp and scallions. It was good, as they usually are, but not my favorite. I tend to favor a thinner, chewier version of this Korean staple.

So for Korean tacos without the lines, the sweet sauces or the hipsters, check out Kobawoo House.

Kobawoo House
698 S. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90005
(213) 389-7300

Kogi Schmogi

I'm not much for trends and hype and am especially not much for long lines, so I never got around to trying the Kogi truck. In fact, I was so sick of hearing about it, I couldn't bear to read another word about it, much less write about it (except for some gentle mockery). I made no effort to search it out and I don't do twitter, so unless I stumbled upon it, I wasn't going to be having any.

Recently, though, I was heading to Daikokuya with the family for some ramen when we saw the Kogi truck out in the plaza of the Japanese American Museum in Little Tokyo. When we got to Daikokuya, the wait was so long, as sometimes happens there, that we went off in search of alternatives (little kids + long wait = no fun for anyone). I remembered the Kogi truck, and thought, if not now, when?

The days of the massive lines are gone, but it still did a very steady stream of business for the entire time I was there. We grabbed some taro boba from I Love Boba and settled in for some trendy tacos. We ordered short rib tacos, spicy pork tacos, chicken tacos, sliders and a kimchi quesadilla.

I can't, for the life of me, fathom waiting hours for this stuff. The meat was gristly and/or fatty, and the sauces were too sweet. There was some nice cabbage slaw on the tacos, and I did enjoy the quesadilla with its surprisingly well paired combination of cheese and kimchi. The slider was a good concept with some good flavors, but again, the meat was not impressive.

I returned a week later for another try and picked up blackjack (pork) quesadillas, chicken mulitas and a Kogi Dog. This time the sauces were a bit less dominant than our previous trip. The quesadilla was good, but the Kogi Dog was simply a standard hot dog with a topping similar to that of the tacos.

The mulitas, a special of the day, were similar to chicken tostadas, but with a tortilla on top as well as on the bottom; the order consisted of two of them, one with salsa rojo and one with verde. It was the best dish I'd had at Kogi in both trips. The tortillas were fresh and crisp, and the salsas were piquant and zesty. This was also the least fusiony of the dishes, hewing toward more traditional taco truck fair, though there might have been a bit of kimchi sandwiched in the tortillas with the chicken. It was a pleasant departure from the rest of the menu.

As a whole, Kogi struck me as more inspired by the Cheesecake Factory or some other mass market fusion food hopped up on sweet sauce than anything truly innovative or interesting. But hey, given that I don't Twitter and am not on Facebook, maybe this stuff was never intended for the likes of me in the first place.

Soup is Good Food - My Favorite LA Soups

As the air finally begins to develop something akin to a chill, for Southern California at least, my thoughts turn to soup. Soup is a comfort food in nearly every culture; perhaps the warm, wetness appeals to our desire to return to the womb and feast, once again, on amniotic fluid from the one time in our lives when we lacked any literal independence and were totally and completely dependent on the care of others. Or maybe it's just warm and tasty.

In no particular order, then, come a few of my favorite LA area soups.


Seolleongtang with beef tongue at Hanbat Shul-Lung-Tang. Like Pho Minh's pho, the broth is the essence of beef, though this time, it's beef bones, oxtail to be precise. The murky, milky broth shows the presence of stewed bones and reaches out to comfort every extremity. The tongue is sliced so thinly and is so tender that you might think you are eating ultra-thin strips of filet mignon. This may be the best of the cold-day soups on the list.

Ajiaco at La Fonda Antioqueña. Made from specially imported potatoes and only available on weekends, ajiaco is a Colombian chicken and potato soup in a rich, corn broth. The rich, yellow broth yields flavors of corn and chicken fat and puts the rest of the ingredients to shame, making you wonder why they are; even there. This may be the most delicious broth on the list; it's hard to stop eating.

Pho at Pho Minh. There are thousands of phos throughout the Southland, but none that I've tasted is as intrinsically beefy as Pho Minh's. The broth is so full bodies and representative of beef, that I hesitate to add any of the traditional condiments lest they interfere with that broth. Unlike the beef bone broth at Hanbat, this broth is the essence of the meat, the cow, simmered for God knows how long to wrest every last bit of flavor and present a liquid composition of meat.

Napa Soup with Lamb and Hand Cut Noodles at Dumpling Master. It's tangy, sour and gamey, filled with cabbage, boiled lamb, a good dose of vinegar and chewy, hand cut noodles. This funky Northern Chinese soup is one of my go-to soups and seems like it should cure hangovers, improve virility or have some other mystical effect.

Cream of Corn at La Cabanita. Given how much I love cream soups, it's odd that this is the only one on the list. I just haven't been excited about that many creamed soups in LA. La Cabanita's cream of corn, however, is velvety smooth, sweet and corny. It's topped with crumbled Mexican cheese, which gives it just the right amount of added salt. La Cabanita has a number of excellent soups, but the cream of corn is my favorite.

Bean Paste Casserole at Seongbukdong. The funk continues at this home style Korean restaurant with the bean paste casserole. Not a casserole at all, in the way westerners conceptualize of such a thing, this is a chewy, salty fermented soy bean soup. It tastes like eating an entire bowl of slightly diluted doenjang, the fermented soy bean mash served as a condiment to Korean BBQ. Since it's all I can do not to eat doenjang of the condiment tray with a spoon, this casserole suits me just fine.

Ramen. I'm no Rameniac, but I like a good bowl of ramen, and I go back and forth between whether the ramen is better at Daikokuya in Little Tokyo or Santouka in the Mitsuwa Marketplace. I have a porky soft spot for both Santouka's fatty broth and the pure porky goodness of Daikokuya.

There are other soups I love, but don't have a great example of in LA. Lobster bisque is one of my favorites (are there any Hamburger Hamlets left?). I'm a huge fan of vichyssoise, but I really like my own version the best and besides, it doesn't really count as a cold weather comfort food. And Hawaiian chicken long rice from Ono Hawaiian in Honolulu always deserves a shout out. Then there is Laksa and...well, I could go on.

What are your favorite LA soups?

Rousing Roe: Al Bap at A-Won

In the heat of LA in the summer, I look for the cooler things in life. In Koreatown that means one of the various cold soups, bi bim bop or al bap at A-Won, a Korean-Japanese sushi restaurant on Western. Al-bap is similar to bi bim bap except that instead of meats and veggies, it is made with seaweed and roe. There are at least five types of roe topping an A-Won al bap bowl, including uni, salmon eggs, smelt roe and other roe in hues of green, red and yellow as well as a small, triangular slice of omelet (continuing the egg theme). The mixture of the rice, seaweed and roe creates a salty, fishy, bite that pops in your mouth as you bite down on the various eggs (fish roe - the original pop rocks). A creamy slab of uni is the cherry on top of this rousing roe.

So on a hot day, stop into Al Bap for a roe break.

A-Won
913 S. Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(213) 389-6764

Soup Got Your Tongue? Hanbat Shul-Lung-Tang

ChowDigest Editor and LA Times contributing food writer Thi Nguyen kindly turned me on to the beauty of Hanbat Shul-Lung-Tang. A small entry tucked into a short block of shops on Fifth Street just west of Western reveals this restaurant serving only shul-long-tang (alt. seolleongtang), a long boiled, beef bone stew.

This soup is one of the great beef broths. Pure and simple, it reminds me of pho in its essential beefiness, though it has that cloudy, slightly viscous quality that comes from bones and melted marrow simmered for hours. Also, like pho, the broth is unseasoned and you are expected to add condiments to your liking, including coarse salt, pepper, Korean chili paste and scallions. I wanted to maintain as much of the beef flavor as possible and not cover it with chili, so I stuck to some salt and scallions, which made for a wonderful broth that I slurped to the bottom of the bowl.

Within the broth are a few cellophane noodles and your choice of meat: brisket, flank steak, assorted innards (tripe, spleen, etc.) and tongue. I avoided the innards since tripe is one of the few things I just don't like, but I tried the others. The flank steak was a bit fatty and the brisket was fine but lacked flavor. The tongue, however, was wonderful. Thin, lean slices perfectly complimented the beefiness of the soup. Tongue can be chewy or tough, but this was as tender as steak and more flavorful than either the brisket or the flank steak.

Hanbat Shul is about beautiful minimalism, about doing one thing well and not letting much (including salt) get in the way of that one thing. The soup is pretty much the only thing on the menu here, though it appears that you can get the meats alone. The panchan consist of two bowls of kimchi, cabbage and daikon (both are very good renditions) and then there is a bowl of rice. You will not be asked if you want a beverage though if you do, you can get some cold Korean tea. And that's it. So go, slurp soup, eat tongue and contemplate the beauty of its simplicity.

Hanbat Shul-Lung-Tang
4163 W 5th St
Los Angeles, CA 90020
(213) 388-9499

Seoul Food: Seongbukdong

Named after a neighborhood in the northern part of Seoul, Seongbukdong cooks up what could be best called Korean comfort or soul food. Emphasizing the fermented and the braised, it's the type of food that will make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

As in most places, Seongbukdong's panchan varies, but it tends to emphasize the fermented more than most places. Aside from several traditional kimchis, I've had a green variety of cabbage kimchi with nuts and a fermented shiso dish. Imagine the strong flavor shiso, fermented; it tasted like eating a winery, a not entirely pleasant experience but interesting.

Braised Mackeral is the thing to get here, a stew served in a single, large metal bowl, which looks like the inner pot from a rice cooker. A quick look at all the metal bowls around the restaurant suggests that this is one of the most popular dishes. The mackerel is cut in steaks and cooked up with onions and year-old kimchi. The strong taste of mackerel and its somewhat oily texture works well against the funk of the aged kimchi. The best part, though, is the rich red broth that you slurp up from the bottom of the pot; it's more than a soup, a kimchi jus.

The funk continues with spiced pork and bean paste casserole. This is a two part dish. The pork is a nice but unexceptional Korean BBQ pork plate, but the casserole, which is really a soup, is the stand out. I'm a big fan of doenjang, the fermented soy bean paste which is used as a condiment in many Korean dishes, and the bean paste casserole broth is the essence of doenjang, thick, rich, fermented and salty.

The best dish at Seongbukdong, though, is the spectacular steamed beef short rib. Again, the name is deceptive. This is a braised short rib in a rich, sweet jus. Served in a ceramic pot, the rib is thick cut (i.e. not the typical kalbi style cut) and as tender as any braised short rib I've had. The sweet, beefy stock encases the soft rib meat in a way that shouts that this is comfort food, rich and warm and so good that when the beef is done, you drink the sauce by the spoonful. This dish would definitely cheer me up on a melancholy day.

So good, so warm, so Seoulful.

Seongbukdong
3303 W. 6th St.
Los Angeles, CA 90020
(213) 738-8977

Korean Fried Chicken: BBQ Chicken on Wilshire and Vermont

BBQ Chicken is a chain which recently opened a Koreatown location at 7th and Vermont. Contrary to what you may assume from the name, Korean BBQ doesn't serve much in the way of barbecue. In fact, according to their menu, the B-B-Q in BBQ Chicken stands for "Best of the Best Quality."

Instead, this is another of the Korean fried chicken joints, the major selling point of which seems to be that the chicken is fried in olive oil. I ordered a number of dishes to check it out.

The olive oil fried chicken, known as Olive Original Chicken, was very nice. The batter was crisp and light with a very mild seasoning. Generally, I haven't cared for the non-seasoned fried chicken at the various Korean chicken shops. Without the marinade, they tend to be bland, but I really liked this one which tasted fresh and had nice flavor from the olive oil.

The Teri-Q is more similar to the soy-garlic standards at places like KyoChon and BonChon, but the version at BBQ Chicken was greasy, overcooked and not as intensely flavorful as its competitors' chickens.

As with most of the Korean chicken joints, the further you move from standard fried chicken offerings, the more questionable the dish. The "seasoned chicken" at BBQ consists of fried chicken nuggets coated with a dreadful sauce tasting of sweetened ketchup, and the marinated barbecue chicken was a rubbery airplane-like dish (from the days when the actually served food on planes, that is).

The standout at BBQ Chicken is definitely the Olive Chicken; I can't imagine going back for anything else.

BBQ Chicken
698 S. Vermont Ave, #101 (SE corner)
Los Angeles, CA 90005
(213) 739-1047

(Additional LA area locations in Fullerton and Irvine.)