Kim Chic

It’s Sunday, and four of us have piled into the car to get dinner fixings in Koreatown. Nothing fancy, we agree. No big cooking projects. A low-key, easy dinner after too much fun on a too-late Saturday night. Two of us, the Kim sisters, Betty and Laura, are leading the way, but they’re doggedly modest in this role. “We only know what we like,” they say. “We don’t have any wide-ranging expertise in Korean cuisine.” Never mind that they ate their mother’s Korean cooking five days a week while growing up in Ohio. Or that, several years ago, in an attempt to formally educate themselves in the art of Korean cooking, they hired an accomplished Korean chef and hosted a summerlong series of cooking classes in their own home. At any rate, they have agreed to take us shopping and assemble a meal easy enough to be replicated by anyone, however truly inexperienced, who is interested in eating Korean food at home.

“Is there any kind of Korean food you don’t like?” they ask as we set out.

“Well, the other day I had a salad with all different kinds of beans and greens with an egg and rice all mushed together that I wasn’t crazy about,” I say. “It reminded me of what, in the Midwest, we used to call a garbage salad.”

Soft laughter. “Bibimbap! That’s one of the things we were planning to make!” they say. “But we don’t have to . . .”

“No, please, maybe your version will change my mind.”

Our first stop is the HK Market on Western Avenue, a hard-used, always busy supermarket with a hairily congested parking lot. We find a spot on the street and, at the front, pause to admire a machine extruding small, orange-hued, yam-flavored rice cakes soon to be packaged in cellophane and sold as Doo Doo Rice Pops. Inside, we take a hard left to the warm-food counter, and the Kim sisters, after a brief conference — they will confer softly, intensely on every decision — agree on a black-bean sauce for rice noodles (a Chinese dish) and big, soft bready dumplings stuffed with meat and vegetables. Next, we move to the prepared-food cases where they select mung pancakes (pindaeduk) and fried fish fillets (saeng sun jun). “And here’s your garbage salad!” they say, tossing into the cart a pretty, colorful arrangement of beans and shredded greens (fernbrake and spinach) arranged around a small carton of red-pepper dressing. The traditional bibimbap accompaniment is a seaweed-wrapped, sushi-style roll filled with vegetables.

The sisters confer again over the various freshly packaged pickles and other side dishes in their clear plastic containers — and swiftly agree that the lotus root here is in sugar syrup and probably too sweet; they like it more savory and will look for that elsewhere. They jointly select dried anchovy (myeolchi); dried, seasoned, marinated radish (muumallaengi); dried, seasoned squid (ohjingoh); and pickled cucumbers and daikon. They already have kimchi (pickled napa cabbage) at home but point out that people select a brand based on their preferred degree of fermentation — the more fermented the kimchi, the more steeped-looking and orange-colored the cabbage appears.

Next comes the search for a good red-pepper sauce to accompany the mung pancakes and fish fillets. The Kim sisters want the kind with sesame seeds that they ate throughout their childhood, and don’t find it at HK. On our way out, we stop at the candy counter and taste a free dduk, a moist, chewy, salty-sweet, bean-filled rice candy, which induces us to buy a whole tray of coconut-covered dduk.

Once back in the car we head down Western to the Koreatown Plaza, located on what is now known as “the old mall” (as opposed to the Koreatown Galleria, the big new fancy mall on the corner of Western and Olympic). “My parents have stayed loyal to this mall,” the sisters say of the large pink structure.

“But your parents live in Ohio!” we exclaim.

“Yes, but they’re here visiting for a good five months every year.”

We have come to the Plaza Market to buy the meat: two big plastic tubs of beef kalbi or galbi, thin-sliced, bone-in marinating short ribs ready for the barbecue grill. Here, the sisters find the right salty-sweet lotus root. “We like the more Japanese style, with more soy sauce.” From this market’s pickle selection we find another favorite, garlic stems in red pepper (manil jong). And here, too, is found Cosmo brand red-pepper sauce, which has sufficient sesame-seed content to quench the sisters’ childhood longing.

Our last stop is at the new Korean mall, just a few blocks down Western. “So close!” I say.

“Yes, it seemed unkindly competitive,” they say. “Which is why the question of loyalty even comes up.”

The supermarket in the new mall does have the bright, upscale gloss — and prices — of a new, high-end market; it’s like the Bristol Farms of Koreatown. But the assortment of pickled and pre-made foods does seem particularly fresh and appealing, and we can’t help but gather several more side dishes — like the bright-green, wonderfully crunchy pickled cucumbers (oimuchim). “If you want pickled crabs, go ahead,” say the Kim sisters.