Just try to get a table Friday night at Sahn Maru Korean B.B.Q. in Oakland.
My group of seven was relegated to a back room reserved for private parties from the looks of the disco ball overhead. But we were grateful for any place to sit.
I gather it is always this way. Friends who live in Oakland were hunting for good Korean food. When they saw the crowd at Sahn Maru, they tried it out, and now they eat there every Friday. Never mind the wait for a table. The food and the friendly service make up for that.
Sahn Maru is located on Oakland’s Kimchi Row, a stretch of Telegraph Avenue that is lined with Korean restaurants and bars, a Korean market, housewares store and community center as well as African restaurants and, next door to Sahn Maru, a Japanese restaurant.
Of course the menu features barbecue, because that is what most non-Koreans want. But Sahn Maru has another specialty, black goat.
And so we ordered heuk yum so tang, a sizzling hot stone pot filled with goat meat, fragrant sesame leaves and green onions in vibrant orange broth. One of three goat dishes on the menu, it is spicy and strongly gamey, perhaps too gamey for anyone who doesn’t like lamb. But I thought it was delicious. No wonder the restaurant is proud of this dish.
There’s no table top barbecuing at Sahn Maru, so our barbecued beef was cooked in the kitchen. Rather than the usual glistening, charred bul gogi, it seemed to have been sautéed, which is what Koreans might do at home, and was a pallid gray. Still, it was flavorful, tender and satisfying.
Braised beef in a mild, slightly sweet sauce, another Sahn Maru specialty, came with clear noodles, vegetables and chewy tubular rice cakes, a nice blend of flavors and textures.
The restaurant offers a good variety of banchan, the small plates of such things as marinated fish cake, broccoli, eggplant, spicy-sweet marinated radish, bean sprouts and kimchi that accompany Korean meals. So our table was covered with food, including an enormous zucchini and jalapeno pancake on a sizzling flat skillet, rice and barley tea.
Afterwards, we were given small white cups of cold, sweet cinnamon-ginger tea with a single pine nut and slice of Korean red date floating on the surface, a refreshing way to end a highly flavored meal.
The name Sahn Maru means top of the mountain, according to the menu. Kimchi Row is quite flat, but we did have a summit sort of experience that night as far as the food and the nice feel of the place were concerned.
Sahn Maru Korean B.B.Q., 4315 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA 94609. Tel. (510) 653-3366.
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