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Spicy Rice Cakes in a Garden Setting

This isn't your usual pasta. As a matter of fact, it isn't pasta at all, but rice cakes in a red sauce with seafood and vegetables.

Like a picture, it has a frame, golden slices of kabocha squash. 

The place where you can eat this is Cafe Scent, a Korean coffee shop with a long menu of snacks, main dishes and sweets.

This dish is a fusion version of tteokbokki. a rice cake stir-fry that often is very spicy. At Cafe Scent, the sauce is lighter and less spicy. Along with shrimp, squid and a single mussel, the mix includes mushrooms and red and green bell peppers. On top is melted mozzarella, like a pizza.

Cafe Scent gets its name not just from aromatic dishes like this but from its other specialty, flowers. The shop deals in wedding bouquets, gift baskets, floral decorations for events, table centerpieces and the like. 

It's cute and cozy with two rooms, one rather dark. The other (above) is lighter and more gardenlike.

Cafe Scent, 3680 Wilshire Blvd., #PO3, Los Angeles, CA 90010. (The entrance is around the corner on Serrano Ave., south of Wilshire.) Tel: (213) 383-9440.

A Korean Soup to Cure Your Ills

You have a cold, a virus, you're tired out and dragging. Don't worry. There's a quick cure--in Koreatown. It's the bean sprout soup (above) at Chunju Han-Il Kwan, a small restaurant tucked into the corner of a mall on 6th Street.

Your cure comes in a black stone bowl that right off sends steam into your stuffy nostrils. It's crammed with soy bean sprouts (the kind with the big yellow bulb on one end), rice, bits of beef, an egg that cooks in the soup, green onions and spicy red pepper flakes to clear your head. And there's a healthy pile of crisp seaweed strands on top.  

You also get a little dish of super salty shrimp sauce. Of all things, it's lavender--since when did shrimp turn purple?  Next to it are containers of sesame seeds and tiny red pepper grains. With these, you can flavor the soup any way you like.

A Korean friend swears this bowl of goodies cures her colds. Above, you can see how popular it is--almost the whole table has ordered it. 

And you get still more--at least eight banchan (six are in the photo above), which are as comforting and homey as the soup. The mix might include steamed eggs (mild and nourishing), slippery japchae (stir-fried transparent noodles), marinated vegetables and soft squares of acorn jelly that taste really good despite their murky color. There's kimchi too, of course, and my favorite--spicy marinated fish cake.

That same Korean friend who comes here to cure her colds says the banchan are home style, like her grandmother would make.  But don't wait until you're sick to try the food. It's good for you any time. 

Chunju Han-Il Kwan,  3450 W 6th St, No. 106, Los Angeles, CA 90010. Tel: (213) 480-1799.

A Top Choice: Miari's Noodle Soup

On a cool day (or any day) in Los Angeles, a top choice for lunch is hot soup--the one with handrolled noodles and fresh clams at Miari Noodle House in Koreatown.

A dozen clams top off a bowl filled with handmade noodles and delicate natural clam broth. Although the soup looks bland, it has a sneaky undertone of heat from diced green chiles. Most of these are mild, but one green bit set off so much fire in my mouth that I had to reach quickly for the cool barley tea that accompanies meals.

Another surprise. Those thin white slices in the bowl aren't white radish but potato. Green onions and fine strands of green squash are more to be expected. 

Some Korean noodle shops provide banchan (assorted side dishes), but here the only accompaniment is a plate of cabbage kimchi and radish slices (above)--spicy, a little sweet and delicious. The price is delicious too--$8.99.

Miari Noodle House, 3224 W. Olympic Blvd., #102, Los Angeles, CA 90006. (323) 735-0647.

A Royal Launch for a Korean Guide

This was no all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue but royal food, delicate morsels such as lobster with sweet and spicy mango-bean paste sauce (above); abalone from far-off Jeju Island and scallops scented with ginseng.

The occasion was the launch of the Korean Food Foundation's guidebook to Korean restaurants in Los Angeles (disclaimer: I 'm the author). This is the Foundation's first restaurant guide for the United States. Another, for New York, was introduced two days later.

For the launch, two pavilions were set up in the courtyard of Madang Plaza in Koreatown, one for drinks, appetizers and speeches, the other for a  dinner designed around Korean wraps, called ssam. The chef was Myung Sook Lee of the California Culinary Academy.

Dinner started with the scallop (above), serving as a "wrap" for diced ginseng. The sauce below it is made with green tea.  On that same plate were a raw tuna and pear wrap and raw salmon wrapping fine onion slivers, with a sauce made from gochujang (red pepper paste). The lobster came next, finished off with fried sea kelp, sesame leaves and truffles.

You know how awkward it is to gnaw bones at a party. That problem was solved for Korean royalty by mincing beef and wrapping it around mushrooms to make an appropriately dainty morsel (above left).

On the plate with it is the Jeju abalone on a fried rice cake, both wrapped with Korean water parsley and seasoned with truffle honey soy sauce.

You may have eaten bulgogi (grilled marinated beef), but probably not like this (above), accompanied by assorted leafy wraps, called bossam kimchi. Actually, the meat isn't bulgogi but neobiani, which is its royal name.

Noodles in anchovy broth came with this course, and dinner ended with dainty confections, one made with ginger braised in honey and coated with pine nut powder, the other an elegant version of the fried sweet yagwa. Along with these, guests drank bracing cups of ginseng tea with pine nuts.

Stacks of the guidebooks were given out at the party. The week of March 4, you will be able to access it online at the Korean Food Foundation's website, www.hansik org. You will also be able to download a "Korean Restaurant Guide LA" app on any iOS or Android device. Most of the 40 restaurants in the book are in Koreatown, but some are in other parts of Los Angeles, and two are in Orange County.

Get your Beef and Banchan at Star King

So you're a meat and potatoes person? Well, how about beef and banchan? That's what you'll get at Star King, the first Koreatown restaurant to put Certified Piedmontese beef on the menu.

This premium beef, produced in the United States, is available at very few places in Los Angeles. To learn more about it, read my article in L.A. Weekly's Squid Ink.

Star King, a newish restaurant at Wilshire and Western, is serving Piedmontese rib eye, like the handsome steak on the grill in the photo above, and boneless short ribs and brisket.

The grills are fueled by long-burning coals imported from Korea that are processed without chemicals. They burn cleanly, so you can barbecue serenely, without sparks popping in your face.

The dips for the meat are plain salt, red chile sauce and a sweet soy sauce mixture with jalapeños and radish.

The banchan (at the top) include standards such as kimchi, marinated radish, cucumber slices seasoned with red pepper paste, Korean potato salad and a seafood and green onion pancake.

Star King also serves a parsley salad and housemade acorn jelly (above) tossed with toasted seaweed and jalapeños in a sesame oil dressing. 

If you're willing to eat in true Korean style, you'll end your meal with scorched rice soup and bean paste stew. After that, you'll have sikhye, a sweet, fermented rice drink. Sikhye is common in Koreatown, but Star King's version is one of the best, richly flavored and seasoned with cinnamon. 

Star King Premium Korean B.B.Q., 3807 Wilshire Blvd., #120, Los Angeles, CA 90010. Tel: (213) 384-5464. 

Gangsters and Good Food

It was great fun watching thugs slash and bash each other in the Korean film "Nameless Gangster" at CGV Cinema in Koreatown.

The action wasn't as bloody as it sounds, certainly not enough to upset a stomach full of bibimbap. A good thing, because it was excellent dolsot bibimbap (at top), nice and crusty

Rice, meat, vegetables, egg (cooked crisp, the way I like it, by the hot stone bowl) and a salad on top, all tossed with spicy sauce, a perfect pre-Korean-movie dinner. Otherwise it would have been frustrating to watch the gang guys eye each other over what looked like very tasty meals.  

The restaurant, MaDang 621, is right below the theater in Madang Plaza on Western Avenue. It's so stylishly Korean that you think you're having dinner followed by a show in Seoul.  

The menu includes several versions of bibimbap, including a cool one topped with raw beef (above). Barley tea and a few banchan came with the meal. The sweet rice drink sikhye, with a couple of pine nuts floating on top, followed.

For my taste, that's better movie food than popcorn, nachos and a soda. 

MaDang 621, 621 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90005. Tel: (213) 384-2244.

Genwa--Korean Food with Class

Genwa Korean BBQ is so close to home that it has become part of the neighborhood scenery, like another Subway or KFC.

I'd forgotten how good it is until I went in the other night. The menu is so user friendly that if you don't know anything about Korean food, all you have to do is choose a set "course," which is a complete meal. These start at $45 and $50, and that's for two people.

The only difference is that the $50 dinner subtitutes galbi (rib meat) for cha dol (unseasoned prime brisket).

Servers grill the meat in front of you, adding garlic cloves, jalapeño slices, mushrooms and even sliced banana to the  grill.

There are so many side dishes--banchan--that they circle the grill more than once. I counted 23 plus plates of rice wrappers and daikon sliced paper thin in which to wrap the meat along with lettuce and spicy sauces.

Banchan the other night included egg slices that were sweet and chewy--I'd never seen that before--spindly Korean fern brake (gosari), hot marinated beef cubes, various fishy things, sweet pureed potato salad, lotus root, raw broccoli, marinated celery, slices of Korean pancake and the usual bean sprouts and spinach. 

Soon tofu--soft tofu in spicy sauce--is part of the dinner along with a bowl of salad and a sizzling hot pot of custardy eggs.

Still another dish is  japchae, transparent noodles with vegetables and egg strands (above). 

The servers are genuinely friendly, not bored with explaining each dish, and ready to provide more banchan without being asked.  The room itself is darkly handsome, even elegant. It is L-shaped, with booths on one side, tables on the other and smoke-free, despite the grilling.

At the end, you're given a glass of the Korean rice drink sikhye and a tray holding two tiny white circles that look like mints until the waiter pours hot water on them and they curl and twist like angry creatures. These are hot towels for your fingers. Be glad you didn't eat them.

And there's more--a graceful, long-stemmed lollipop comes with the receipt after you pay to thank you for being there. 

Genwa Korean BBQ, 5115 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel: (323) 549-0760.

 

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Zzamong: A Trip to Korea's Past

"You are traveling to '70s Korea in a time machine," said my Korean friend as we ate at Zzamong on West 3rd Street in Los Angeles.

A Korean-style Chinese restaurant, Zzamong is like the old fashioned neighborhood family restaurants she remembers from home. Its ambitious menu of 70 dishes has been whittled down to half that size, retaining only what customers really like.

At the top of their favorites is the noodle dish jjajang-myeon.

Kids love it because the dark sauce looks like chocolate and because they can laugh at each other when the sauce dribbles onto their faces. The dark color comes from caramel and black bean sauce, not chocolate. 

At Zzamong, the English name is Peking noodle, and there are three versions. The most elaborate contains seafood (above), but pork is more traditional, my friend said. The typical garnish is sliced cucumber.

Often this would be the only dish a Korean would order.

If the occasion called for something more, the typical choice would be sweet and sour pork (right).

Zzamong's version is nothing like the usual Chinese-American rendition of this dish. The only additions are onion and cucumber, no pineapple, bell peppers and catsup. The meat is thickly battered and very crisp. The sauce is clear, thick and sweet.

Because the food is Chinese, banchan do not accompany meals. You do, however, get three small side dishes--cubed radish kimchi, onion and yellow pickled radish. The Korean way is to sprinkle vinegar over the radish and onion and dip the onion slices in a small dish of thick black sauce. 

Although tea in some form usually comes with Chinese and Korean meals, the only drink provided at Zzamong is water.

Zzamong Chinese Restaurant, 4255 w. 3rd St., Los Angeles, CA 90020. Tel: (213) 739-2747.  

Vegas Gets a Korean Taco Truck

Korean taco trucks may be old news in Los Angeles, but Las Vegas got its first this year. It's Hanshik Taco, run by what else but an Italian from Pennsylvania.

Ron Principio opened in June, working 12 hours a day seven days a week and sweltering in 110-degree temperatures to put out what the city has been craving.  Now he's taking it easier, closing on Sundays and Mondays.

The tacos are Asian influenced rather than hardcore Korean. The meat is mildly seasoned and so is the kimchi that goes into the tacos. Principio calls it "Korean slaw."  If you want a spicier taco, you can spike it with Sriracha sauce.

The tortillas are flour, very fresh and flexible. The meats are pork, beef or chicken. Vegetarians get tofu and egg.

Principio also makes an El Korean "Nate" dog. Not limited by the Korean angle, he creates seasonal tacos such as October's Germania, honoring Oktoberfest.  This one gives more play to his skills as a chef.

He braises red cabbage as the base for a smoked brat and bacon and puts apple-onion coulis underneath. 

Such a concoction deserves a longer life than one month, even though it doesn't fit the Hanshik theme.

At the beginning, Principio made burritos, but that was too complicated, and he gave it up. 

Nevada law doesn't allow chairs unless there's a restroom available, so he sets out big coolers, which have a perfectly legal function. You can sit on them if you like.

Principio has put heart and soul into this business. The motto on the truck and on his business card is "From the Seoul."  Not hard to figure. 

The Hanshik taco truck parks in the corner of the Lee's Discount Liquor parking lot, West Lake Mead Blvd. between Buffalo and Tenaya, across from the Bettye Wilson Soccer Complex. Tel: (702) 249-2255. The tacos are $2.78 each or two for $4.63.