Koreatown's Top 40

WATCHING THE

PHO FLY

Location Info

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Zip Fusion Restaurant

3855 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90010-3202

Category: Restaurant > Asian

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

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Soot Bull Jeep

3136 W. 8th St.
Los Angeles, CA 90005

Category: Restaurant > Asian

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

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Shik Do Rak

2501 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90006

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

Dan Sung Sa

3317 W. Sixth St.
Los Angeles, CA 90020

Category: Restaurant > Korean

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

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Mandarin House

3074 W. Eighth St.
Los Angeles, CA 90005

Category: Restaurant > Asian

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

Photos

Chung Moo Kim Bop House

3030 W. Olympic Blvd., #108
Los Angeles, CA 90006

Category: Restaurant >

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

So Kong Dong

2716 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90006

Category: Restaurant > Korean

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

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More About

• Kong Dong
• Koreatown
• Seoul
• Sedans
• Main Dish Recipes

As delicious as a bowl of sullongtang can be, it is incontrovertible: The sharp mineral smack of long-boiled beef bones is distinctly not to everybody’s taste. Gently spiced Vietnamese pho, on the other hand, may be the greatest beef-bone soup in the world, mellowed with cinnamon and star anise, roundly meaty from long simmering, and garnished with a lavish variety of cattle parts and a salad bowl’s-worth of herbs. So it was probably only a matter of time before the Korean community clasped pho to its bosom, and more than a dozen Vietnamese noodle shops, most of them operating 24 hours a day, speckle the boulevards of Koreatown. None of these pho shops is quite up to the standards of Golden Deli or Pho 79, but there are worse places to end up at 4 in the morning than at one of the various locations of Pho 2000, soaking up the excess soju with a warm bowl of noodles. 215 N. Western Ave., (323) 461-5845, and other locations.

PANCHAN PLAN

To connoisseurs, a restaurant is best judged by the quality of its panchan, the little dishes of kimchi and other preserved foods laid out at the beginning of a Korean meal. And panchan rarely come any better than they do at Sa Rit Gol — the candied dried fish, the crisp water kimchi of radish, the chile-marinated squid, even the ordinary cabbage kimchi, are admired by the kind of old-line Korean traditionalists who insist on making their own kimchi, miso, and soy sauce, at home. But even if your own exposure to panchan extends no further than a couple of excursions to Soot Bull Jeep, you are still likely to recognize the focused tanginess and the careful, freshness-preserving fermentation of the kimchi at Sa Rit Gol as extraordinarily good. Sa Rit Gol is indeed one of the best restaurants in Koreatown, a rustic joint still decorated with raw wood and Korean beer posters, full of two-fisted drinkers, locally famous for its spicy pork barbecue, grilled belly pork and grilled pike — classic drinking food — as well as bubbling crab casseroles, black-cod soups and braised shiitake mushrooms with spinach. 3189 W. Olympic Blvd.; (213) 387-0909.

OLD KING COAL

Natural-charcoal barbecue, which is to say the atavistic pleasure of grilling meat over live coals, is traditionally kind of a cheap thrill. Such barbecuing as practiced at fancier Korean restaurants is usually done over well-ventilated gas grills, which are much less likely to leave your favorite blouse perforated with tiny holes like a silk colander. The newish, marble-encrusted Tahoe Galbi, another of those Koreatown restaurants that seem to be all patio, may be the first place in town where it is possible to enjoy both the superb meat characteristic of the best Korean restaurants and the smoky kick of live-fire cooking — and when you bite into the galbi, Korean short ribs, they flood your mouth with sweet juice. 3986 Wilshire Blvd., (213) 365-9000.

THEATER OF BLOOD

In this part of town, the word sundae on a menu refers less often to a banana split than it does to the famous Korean blood sausages, mildly seasoned links of ox gore shot through with transparent vermicelli and served fried or boiled. Ham Kyung Do serves nothing but this Korean sundae, usually floating in a rich, extremely livery soup salted with chunks of assorted cattle organs. And as at an ice cream social, sometimes nothing but sundae will do. 955 S. Vermont Ave., (213) 388-2013.

RAW POWER

Korean sushi occupies something of an alternate universe, where raw fish is served up in truck-driver slabs, pungent flavors are prized, and drinks are remarkably strong. If you can imagine relishing a bit of raw tilefish wrapped in a lettuce leaf with sliced jalapeño chiles, a raw garlic clove and a smear of stinky bean paste, Korean sushi may be for you. (I happen to love the stuff.) Japanese sushi bacchanals may involve a few exquisite grams of a severely endangered mullet; Korean ones tend to include the meat from a massive, whole flatfish that was alive at the beginning of dinner service.

There is a lot of Korean-style sushi in Koreatown, and I have had more than decent meals at Dok Sun, across from the La Curacao department store, at Haneda Sushi on Wilshire and at the late Living Fish Center, but Bu San is my favorite Korean sushi place — tell one of the chefs you are interested in Korean-style sushi, and he’ll set you up with a meal from the fourth dimension: sashimi with sliced chiles and whole cloves of raw garlic; raw sea cucumber in fermented bean paste; tuna with kimchi and live halibut sliced into sashimi before your eyes. Awesome. 201 N. Western Ave., (323) 871-0703.

BEAR NIGHT

There are many reasons to fall in love with OB Bear, a venerable Koreatown tavern across the street from Southwestern Law School. You may admire the spicy squid served with noodles, the kebabs, or the roast chicken. You may be intrigued with the bar’s charming version of buffalo wings, which are as sticky and peppery and oily as the original, only more so. Something about the setup of the place seems to encourage the intake of intoxicating liquids, and it is easy to find yourself ordering frankly unwise amounts of whiskey, or personal kegs of beer so large that they dwarf the rather small tabletops, which can make any evening more entertaining. We are shallow and easily amused. To us, it is enough that this cheerful den of inebriation is located directly below the local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. 3002 W. Seventh St., (213) 480-4910.