624032 Sun May 31 17:49:40 -0700 2009 19 12 Boston Area 0 4730956 A good friend of mine is going on a research trip to Korea this summer. I wanted to plan an outing to a traditional Korean place so she can get more familiar with the flavors. I thought this would be fun for me as well because I know very little about Korean cooking and do not know which places would be most authentic. I would love some tips on where to got and what to order to get a taste of what she is likely to experience there. Any suggestions? Sun May 31 17:49:41 -0700 2009 158016 cassoulady 1 4730971 If there is an HMart near you, it would be a good shopping experience. The one near me also has a couple of Korean stands in the food court. In some ways the casual places like this can be as good an introduction to a cuisine as a full sit down restaurant. Sun May 31 17:57:38 -0700 2009 4730956 12139 paulj 1 4731015 Korean Garden Restaurant is a good place to go for some Korean food. It will be hot and spicy. I don't know what to recommend but pretty much anything on the menu would be a fun trip to Korea on your taste buds. It is located on Harvard ave. Another great place where they have the tables for Korean barbeque and a lot of traditional dishes would be Chung Ki Wah 27 Riverside Ave Medford, MA 02155 Your best bet on whats good to eat is to ask your waiter or waitress. The waitresses at Chung Ki wah may be more informed on whats traditional. The taste of Korean food will be quite the trip. Depending on what you eat, the taste of the food will be a brand new experience for your taste buds so be adventurous. There is a dish i would recommend but it isn't on the english menu so asking for something special from the wait staff would be good. One of the dishes I crave that is traditional Korean would be a plate with rice cakes, fatty intestines, and rice sausage called soondae. all mixed together. Sorry i don't know the name of it. Sun May 31 18:14:47 -0700 2009 4730956 294258 ButtMunch 2 4731063 thanks! I have eaten Korean food but dont know enough to know what is traditional and what would be more americanized so I appreciate the suggestions! Sun May 31 18:29:36 -0700 2009 4731015 158016 cassoulady 3 4731232 If they put a half dozen little plates of items like kimchee and spiced dried sardines on the table before the main coarse, then it is 'authentic'. As far as I know it, there isn't much of a tradition of Americanized Korean food. It's not like Chinese or Mexican food, where there are places that cater mainly to non-Koreans. If neither of you have had Korean before, anything will be a learning experience. Sun May 31 19:22:26 -0700 2009 4731063 12139 paulj 3 4731351 In addition to Chung Ki Wa for barbecue, you might try Wuchon in Union Sq (Somerville), since you can also go visit Reliable market across the street for prepared foods to take home! At Wuchon, I tend to stick with soups and stews there; some to try might include doenjang jjigae (kind of like a Korean version of miso), biji jjigae (soybean stew/gruel(?)), or maeun tang (fish soup). They also have bibimbap, which is frequently an "entry" dish into Korean cuisine, since it's kind of a basic combination of rice and beef. Their pancakes are also good (e.g., the seafood pajeon). (I'm not sure how their barbecue is, though I think we did order samgyeopsal--pork belly- there once, and it was OK) If you stick with cooked dishes, mostly everything they have is reasonably authentic. I think it's true that there's not a lot of truly American Korean dishes, though the danger is that many places have menus full of sushi or other "pan-Asian" items. There are definitely American*ized* Korean items in some area restaurants, though, particularly as concerns variants of bibimbap. I'd stay away from bibimbap made with tofu, salmon, eel, etc., and stick with beef or kimchi (or raw salmon, in hwedopbap) Sun May 31 20:15:37 -0700 2009 4731063 49653 another_adam 4 4731367 Judging from what I've seen in groceries, I think there is a lot of Japanese-Korean food. While some is a Japanese take on Korean, most are a Korean take on Japanese items. Sun May 31 20:25:50 -0700 2009 4731351 12139 paulj 5 4731949 Yes-- in fact, there seem to be three distinct genres: (1) Korean items that were adapted from Japan and are quite common even within Korea, (2) Japanese renditions of Korean items, also some of them relatively well established (e.g., bibinpa, the Japanese version of bibimbap, or kimuchi chijimi, the Japanese version of kimchi pajeon), and (3) dishes created or adopted by Korean(-owned) restaurants in the US as a way of offering more familiar dishes to American. Japanese-run restaurants serving Japanese adaptations of Korean food are really rare, I think. I know of a couple of them in LA, mostly owned by ethnically Korean families that had lived in Japan for a generation or more; but I don't know of anything like that in Boston, or even in the Northeast at all. On the other hand, many sushi restaurants in Boston are Korean-run, and even if they don't advertise themselves as Korean, they may have a couple Korean dishes hiding out somewhere on the menu... Places that advertise themselves as Korean restaurants, such as Wuchon, Chung Ki Wa, and even Minsok, Koreana, etc., have some of the well-established dishes that are influenced by or adapted from Japan. (Korea Garden is probably in this camp; I haven't made it there yet) I wouldn't worry too much about getting truly inauthentic dishes at these places. However, many other Korean "sushi" places here also offer Japanese-inspired dishes that have been added for familiarity, such as teriyaki, tempura, una-don, etc. (Yasu in Coolidge Corner, Apgujung in Newton, Misono @ Super88, ChoCho @ Porter exchange, probably others). If you're already familiar with Japanese restaurants and food, it might be fairly obvious which dishes are the Japanese ones and which are not; otherwise, you might want to get your bearings first at the less sushi-oriented places. There are in fact some places with decent Korean dishes in spite of a wide cross-over menu, too (I see that the new version of Hanmaru is boasting a Thai half of the menu?? their Korean stuff was good in the past, I hope that it's the same as it used to be). But if you're looking for stuff that will correspond closely to what one finds in Korea, these are probably not the place to start. Sadly, it's also very difficult to find Korean restaurants here that serve the Korean counterpart of sushi (kimbap), which frequently involves meat instead of fish. I'd check out the prepared foods in a place like Reliable market or John's (CheongJeong) on Linden in Allston for things like that, since the food in plastic deli containers in these places is almost exclusively Korean. Mon Jun 01 06:51:03 -0700 2009 4731367 49653 another_adam 2 4743859 We finally had a chance to stop by Korean Garden tonight, and thought it was quite good, and indeed, quite authentic renditions of things. Decent selection of banchan (though oddly, all vegetable: spinach, sesame leaf, various seaweeds, kkaktugi (radish pickles), cabbage kimchi, potatoes). We had their seafood pancake (haemul pajeon), which was a little oily but otherwise quite good, and reasonably generous with the seafood. Also got kimchi dweji bibimbap (kimchi and pork mixed rice), which was OK but the egg was fried solid before it arrived, so the yolk couldn't be mixed with the rice. :( I was also in the mood for hoe naengmyeon (elastic noodles with marinated skate wing). It's a dish that's really best gotten at a shop that specializes in it, since the noodles have to be cooked and chilled quickly and attentively, or else they can get mushy or stick together too easily. In addition, the dish relies on a balance of textures and flavors (spicy chewy cartilage of the skate, sweet pear, crunchy radish and cucumbers, elastic noodles, side accompaniment of refreshing icy beef broth), and I've found some places in Boston omit one component or other, esp. the pear. The Korean Garden rendition was quite good--the noodles were a bit overdone and stuck together, but the toppings were all there and the combination was right. The portion was also extremely generous! Even the server commented on the remarkably large portion of fish, so perhaps it's not always that generous. I'd say it's the best naengmyeon I've had in Boston, in spite of the noodles being a bit stuck together. Overall, I'd recommend them for some authentic fare--a little pricier than some of the other options on the same block, but in my opinion, also better. Oh-- the sundae dish with rice cakes is probably called 'sundae ddeokbokki'. I think Color, on the same block, also has it, along with some other mixed ddeokbokki dishes... (It's extremely Korean, but I'm not actually sure that it's all that "traditional" a dish-- I think ddeokbokki is more common with fishcakes, but there are also lots of crazy other mixtures involving ramyeon, dumplings, cheese, spam, etc... Then again, I could be wrong about what is traditional-- my knowledge of the history of ddeokbokki is not very deep!) Thu Jun 04 19:45:36 -0700 2009 4731015 49653 another_adam 3 4744358 Great review, as usual, aa. I love ddeokbokki and have never had it in a Boston restaurant. Looking forward to getting over to Allston. Fri Jun 05 04:45:29 -0700 2009 4743859 121319 digga 3 4744531 You mention that the banchan were oddly all vegetable...I have never had anything but vegetable banchan - what are some non-vegetarian banchan and where have you had them around here? Fri Jun 05 06:13:04 -0700 2009 4743859 11172 Bob Dobalina 4 4744542 A very traditional one is teeny fired anchovies, in a sweet, sticky sauce... Fri Jun 05 06:16:02 -0700 2009 4744531 11108 galleygirl 4 4744561 And the chewy fish-cake is common too. Fri Jun 05 06:21:30 -0700 2009 4744531 11275 Prav 5 4744564 mmm, how could I forget the fish cakes! I've seen a a lot of sliced weiners , er, sausages, around, too.... Fri Jun 05 06:23:04 -0700 2009 4744561 11108 galleygirl 4 4744885 Not sure if it's available around town, but one of my faves is a raw crab in chili sauce. I don't encounter it often enough. Fri Jun 05 07:48:02 -0700 2009 4744531 11162 Nab 4 4745539 Yeah, as mentioned, anchovies (myeolchi bokkeum), flat fish cake (eomuk), pan fried dried squid, shrimp, and egg are all pretty common, and are in the rotation at Minsok, Koreana, Wuchon, Color, etc. Come to think of it, though, we did get steamed egg (gyeran jjim) at Korean Garden, I just forgot about it when posting! There's also a whole panoply of meat and seafood dishes that one doesn't typically get as standard banchan in the Boston area-- crab kimchi, marinated skate (hongeo), pancakes involving meat (muchim, bindaeddeok), tripe, sausage, and so on... Fri Jun 05 10:36:33 -0700 2009 4744531 49653 another_adam 5 4745988 a_a, you seem like a man well-versed in the field, can you identify this particular one: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2289/2136544708_570141f59c.jpg IIRC, I believe it was some kind of land-animal, but can't remember ..... Fri Jun 05 12:29:11 -0700 2009 4745539 11162 Nab 6 4746939 Was it batter-dipped and fried? If so, it looks like it could a form of twigim (like Japanese tempura). If it was flesh and not offals, I'd say maybe chicken (dalk-twigim), though usually that has more of a recognizably chickeny shape. Was the sauce over it sweet? vinegary? Fri Jun 05 17:16:32 -0700 2009 4745988 49653 another_adam 6 4754911 Looks like thinly-sliced fried dark-meat pork (as a_a mentions, "twigim," which means fried). It looks like tang su yuk but dry, without the sweet-ish gloppy sauce) to me. I remember my mom would make that often but I wouldn't touch the stuff since I was a non-meat eater. Mon Jun 08 19:13:38 -0700 2009 4745988 121319 digga 7 4754960 digga, thanks for bumpin, i musta missed a_a's response earlier. this is going back a few years, but yes it was indeed twigim, and there was some clear sauce drizzled over the top as you can see, though i do not recall if it was sweet or vinegar-y. nor do i recall the protein, but IIRC it was pleasantly chewy, in what could i guess be a dark-meat pork way, or even in a chicken gizzard kinda way. =) Mon Jun 08 19:27:12 -0700 2009 4754911 11162 Nab