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Master Ha's Amazing Beef Bone Broth

It's amazing--beef bone broth that's as white as milk. But there's no milk in it, no cream, no creamer, nothing but pure beef essence.

The only place to get it is Master Ha Korean Restaurant in Koreatown. There, owner/chef Jason Ha (above) cooks the broth down for 50 hours, transferring it from one giant pot to another until the final pot holds the richest reduction.

First, beef bones are soaked, then boiled and rinsed twice to make sure they are perfectly clean. Then they go into the first pot to boil with water until reduced to a third, which takes 10 to 12 hours. In the next pot, the broth is again reduced to a third. And so on. 

The final concentrated broth (above) goes into the famous Korean ox bone soup seolleongtang (at the top). The soup is brought to the table unseasoned so that customers can taste the perfection of the broth. They're then free to add salt and pepper.

A spicy version of seolleongtang appeals to young customers and Latinos, Ha said.

The magic broth also goes into the brisket soup suyuk (above), served steaming hot. To eat this, you wrap a sesame leaf around a slice of meat, adding veggies from the soup.

Then you dip the bundle into a sweet jalapeño, soy sauce and mustard mixture (above).

Master Ha opened at the end of March. The menu is small, just nine dishes. Another soup is galbitang, beef short rib soup with egg strands on top and clear noodles underneath (above). 

Soups are the mainstay, but Master Ha's marinated crab combo is also popular. The raw crab (above) has a quail egg on top and rice at the bottom.

Seasoned crab innards from the shell (above) can be stirred in to intensify the flavor.


The other seafood option is marinated raw shrimp and abalone (above).

Kimchi, marinated radish and thick green onions come with the dishes (above). Insulated containers on the table hold corn/barley tea. When the meal is over, the kitchen sends out hazelnut-flavored coffee as a palate cleanser.

Ha already plans to open another restaurant. He has plenty of experience, having cooked in a restaurant his father owned and also for his church. For the past seven years Ha has prepared the food served after services, and this is where he perfected his broth. He still does this, and that's why Master Ha is closed on Sundays. 

Master Ha Korean Restaurant, 1147 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90006. Tel: (323) 998-0427.  

Gwang Yang's Special Style of Bulgogi

You've probably eaten scads of bulgogi (Korean barbecued beef), but not like that at Gwang Yang Korean BBQ in Koreatown.

Here, the taste isn't dominated by soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and garlic, as at most Korean restaurants. The meat is American Kobe beef and deserves to shine, rather than be dominated by strong seasonings.

For Gangnam style, the marinade is just garlic and Korean pear and apple juice. For L.A. style, those ingredients are made sweeter with Korean black cane sugar.

The meat is marinated only after an order is placed rather than prepared in advance. A light, sweet herbal sauce comes with it for dipping.

The charcoal is special too--it's black oak charcoal from Korea, which burns quietly for hours (above). The vents work so well you dine in quiet, smokeless comfort.

The banchan are as refined as the meat. Traditional kimchi is well flavored, but not over-the-top spicy.  A watery white kimchi (above) isn't spicy at all. Its purpose is to refresh your palate as you eat.

What I thought were strands of white radish were actually potato, lightly cooked and cool.  Thick cucumber slices heavily coated with red sauce were more sweet than hot. Steamed eggs, radish stem kimchi and sweet, slightly spicy marinated beef were other banchan the day I was there.

Two salads come with the barbecue. This combination of bean sprouts and green onions is spicier than you would expect. Hot red sauce hides under the surface.

This salad will cool you down with a creamy vinaigrette.

Gangnam style and LA Style bulgogi are $28.99, with a minimum of two orders. You should add at least one more dish, American Kobe yukhwoe, which is Korean style beef tartare (above).

This too is seasoned differently from other Korean restaurants, replacing sesame oil and raw egg with pine nuts and a chile sauce that is sweet and slightly spicy. It's served with cucumber and strands of Korean pear.

Start with the tartare, then move on to bulgogi, which comes with rice--try the mixed rice, colored by grains of Korean black rice--as well as with the salads and banchan.

Gwang Yang Korean BBQ, 3435 Wilshire Blvd., #123, Los Angeles, CA 90010. Tel: (213) 385-5600.

It's Not All Sushi at Slow Fish

Why would I eat spicy Korean pork in a sushi restaurant? Because it's so darned good, that's why.

The restaurant is the Japanese/Korean place Slow Fish in Mid-Wilshire. Most of the menu is Japanese, and the seafood is very good--I've eaten a lot of it.

But Korean barbecued pork is on the menu too, called Dancing Pork, and it's one of my favorites. Very spicy, a little sweet and loaded with sauce, it makes a terrific lunch special, for only $8, including miso soup, rice and salad (at the top). Even better, the serving was so big that I took some home for another meal. 

You can also get the pork in a rice bowl, but it needs the salad to offset the heady flavors.

Or you could order this blue crab salad with tofu squares and sesame sauce.

Or tuna tostadas, which taste gingery and spicy. The base is a crisp round wonton skin.

Seared ahi carpaccio with lemon juice, pickled onions, lotus root and radish would be refreshing too.

Or try Korean halibut carpaccio with capers and bright seasonings that include ponzu. And, would you believe, Parmesan cheese. 

This salad-like combination includes salmon, mango and avocado.

And look at this fat avocado, stuffed with seasoned albacore and dressed up with mustard-sesame sauce and eel sauce. Yes, that's a cherry on top.

Light things tucked inside this gangster wrap including crab, shrimp, spicy tuna, avocado and cucumber. The wrapper is soy paper.

Slow Fish makes a big case for the health benefits, flavor and texture of Korean black rice. Here Chef Sean An holds a plate of black rice accompanying swai in a miso cream sauce.

The good news is, you can have black rice on the Dancing Pork lunch special instead of white rice. All it costs is an extra $2.

Slow Fish, 5406 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036. Tel:  (323) 930-0170.

A Cookbook for Korean Food Lovers

Each time I pick up "Cathlyn's Korean Kitchen," I put it down. Not because I'm bored, but because I want to race to the nearest Korean market for ingredients to cook with.

The latest haul was chicken for barbecue and potatoes for the sweet, syrupy potato cubes that I adore when they turn up among the banchan at Korean restaurants. It was a very good dinner, I must say.  

Cathlyn, whom I've known for some time, is Cathlyn Choi of San Diego. The book is named for her PBS cooking show, which ran for four seasons and still appears in some locations. She's a popular host for Korean events in Southern California, which is where I often see her. And she does much more, including hosting a Southern California television show called Asian Voices, preparing yet another TV series and planning another cookbook.

If Korean food supplies this sort of energy, I'm determined to eat more of it. Choi's book will make this easy. Its 55 recipes include dishes that I love at Koreatown restaurants, plus interesting background on Korean cuisine and eating customs. 

"Healthy, delicious and easy to make" is her style, she said, when we talked about the book over lunch at Yong Su San in Koreatown. The "easy" part really appeals. Choi told me that she cooks at home every day and can get a meal together in less than 30 minutes. What better selling point is there than that?

Launched at the end of November after three years in the making, the book is self-published. This shows the drive she has to get things done.  It's beautifully put together, with design and photos of each dish by her husband, Eric Michelson (above). And the type is large enough to see easily while you're working on a recipe. You can get the book either on Amazon or on Choi's site. 

Here is Choi's version of galbi, Korean style short ribs. I cheated, using chicken instead of short ribs, and this worked out well. However, the book includes a really interesting recipe for chicken barbecue with vegetables. This may be my next project.

GALBI
Short Rib Barbecue
From "Cathlyn's Korean Kitchen"

1/3 cup lite soy sauce
1/2 cup pear puree or brown sugar
2 tablespoons cooking wine
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped green onion
1 tablespoon sesame oil 
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1 pound thinly sliced galbi style short ribs (from a Korean market)
1 teaspoon cooking oil 

Combine the soy sauce, pear puree, wine, garlic, green onion, sesame oil, pepper and toasted sesame oil in a deep bowl or plate.

Working one at a time, place a rib onto the plate and, using a spoon, drizzle the marinade over each rib until used up.

Cover the ribs with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 3 hours or overnight.

Heat a grill pan or skillet and drizzle with the cooking oil. Grill the ribs for about 2 minutes or less on each side. Do not overcook. 

Makes 3 to 4 servings. 

A Korean Soup You Ought to Eat

If you can't read Korean but you're up for a foodie adventure, go to the restaurant on the right of "house of the Chigae" in the photo above.

It's Goo Bo Jip, where nothing is in English. That includes the menu posted on the wall (above).

What you can get at this tiny restaurant is an excellent soup that is delicious and really good for you. It's the fish and vegetable soup chueotang.

Read about Goo Bo Jip, where it is and how to order there, and learn about two other restaurants that serve chueotang in the article I wrote for LA Weekly's Squid Ink. 

Kokio Has All the Chicken You Can Eat

A bright red awning helps you find Kokio Chicken, which is partly hidden from the street by bushy trees. As you enter, you can't see that another room opens off the back, making the restaurant roomier than the narrow storefront suggests. It's a quiet, comfortable place to sit (above) while you choose from a long list of chicken dishes. 

Just two months old, Kokio is Korean, so its spicy BBQ chicken (above) is red with gochujang.  But crispy fried chicken is as plain as if it had come from a Midwest diner. And perhaps crunchier, because it's fried to order.

And there's Cajun chicken, South American chicken, Buffalo wings, a chicken Caesar salad and sides of coleslaw, corn salad and French fries that you don't connect with Korean cuisine.

The best deal is the $6.99 combination plate, which lets you choose from 10 main dishes (oddly, pork cutlet is among them). The choices are crispy fried chicken (above) or wings, soy sauce chicken or wings, the spicy BBQ chicken, chicken cutlets, and three more in Korean only.

These come with rice or French fries and a coffee shop-style lettuce salad. Instead of banchan, the accompanments are a Mexican fresh salsa and a really delicious green sauce that resembles Indian cilantro chutney. The one nod to Korean tradition is sweet and sour radish cubes. Spicy rice cakes, one of Korea's most popular snacks, are on the menu, but they're not part of the combinations.  

Kokio could be your go-to place for party platters. You can order a chicken dinner for five to 10 people for $95, including whole chickens, lots of wings, drumsticks, sides, a couple of salads and the spicy rice cakes, and bigger assortments for more people--just in time for Super Bowl Sunday.

Kokio Chicken, 371 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90004. Tel: (323) 464-7000. Open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Dish of the Week: Korean Salmon

Actually it was last week, at the Korean Food Fair in downtown Los Angeles. 

And not every one got to taste the salmon, only those attending a media conference where it was presented by Bernard Guillas, executive chef of the Marine Room at the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club.

An ardent fan of Korean food, Guillas won the Top Chef Korean Food Challenge in 2011. For the conference, he dreamed up the dish with only a few days notice.

The salmon--ocean-farmed Skuna Bay salmon from Vancouver Island--had been cured for 48 hours with smoked sea salt, black sesame seeds, gochujang (Korean red pepper paste), and tangerine and Meyer lemon zests.

Guillas  (above) placed the fish on a round of jumbo Korean pear that he had marinated with pickling spices and pomegranate-flavored Hong Cho, a Korean vinegar.

Seaweed salad with sukkat (crown daisy) went underneath, and masago roe, mint and slivers of dried Korean peppers went on top. A couple of spoons of pickling liquid moistened the salad. The last touch was a sesame leaf placed at the side.

Who knows--Guillas might one day add this to the Marine Room menu. Meanwhile, you can taste other Korean fusion dishes there. Ttoekbokki, spicy stir-fried rice cakes, are at the bar, embellished with such non-Korean additions such as duck confit.

And the main room has wild mushroom casserole topped with black garlic, a Korean import that was featured at the food fair. You can read more about that in my article for LA Weekly's Squid Ink. 

Where's the (Crunchy) Beef?

It's at Star King Korean BBQ in Koreatown, lurking under a pile of greens in a beef salad.

The strips of beef are coated with flour and flash fried, producing a crunch that doesn't get wimpy even when smothered with moist salad fixings.   

The greens aren't your everyday baby lettuces but perilla leaves combined with Korean chives and strands of carrot, red bell pepper and red onion in a rice vinegar dressing. The final touch is a sprinkle of sesame seeds. 

Star King is known for beef, most of it cooked on the grill, but this salad rates a star too.     

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

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.