Koreatown's Top 40

SHAKE YOUR THING

A particular version of postmodernism is being played out at Nandarang, which, in its indoor-outdoor architecture, its video screens and its neo-retro-futuristic furniture, is more or less a California take on the Korean version of a Japanese update of the sort of midcentury Scandinavian design that was probably riffing on California to begin with. Tables are crowded with both French fries and plates of kimchi, fizzy soju drinks and frothing vats of Bud. But as the Koreatown answer to Pop’s Chocklit Shop in Betty and Veronica’s Riverdale, what Nandarang mostly has is mobs of teenagers out way past their bedtime, grooving on dance-club records and consuming dangerous quantities of the café’s signature coffee-banana shakes. 3811 W. Sixth St., (213) 388-8513.

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

1 user reviews	Write A Review

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

Photos

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 > Asian

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

BADA BINGSU

No discussion of Koreatown cuisine would be complete without mention of bingsu, an overwrought construction of sweet beans, canned fruit cocktail, ice cream, whipped cream and crushed ice, just to mention the basics. A properly made bingsu, which will often be larger than your head, brings casual conversation to a halt. Practically every café in Koreatown has bingsu somewhere on its menu. But the version served at Ice Kiss, a bingsu specialist near the Chapman Market, is garnished with a handful of Technicolor confetti that look and taste an awful lot like Fruity Pebbles. If you’re going to eat like a 6-year-old, you might as well go all the way. 3407 W. Sixth St., (213) 382-4776.

MUNG THE MAGNIFICENT

Kobawoo, which started out as a greasy spoon almost two decades ago, has mellowed into a Koreatown institution, a polished, respectable destination restaurant with some of the best food in the neighborhood at prices almost unbelievably low. Kobawoo has a decent chicken soup, and it is a great place to try the standard called bossam, a sort of combo plate of oysters, sliced pork belly and ultraspicy kimchi. The funky communal pot of bean-paste chigae, or stew, which follows the entrée at a lot of restaurants, is spicy and delicious. The pig’s feet have their fans. But it’s still the home-style pindaeduk, mung-bean pancakes, that keep drawing me back to Kobawoo — the pancakes are ethereal beneath their thin veneer of crunch, melting away almost instantly in the mouth like a sort of intriguingly flavored polenta. 698 S. Vermont Ave., (213) 389-7300.

CABBAGE PATCH

Near the cash register at the bakery Cake Town Garden is a glass warming case, filled with what look like the most beautiful jelly doughnuts you have ever seen: expertly fried, a gorgeous golden brown, and flat as a stack of CDs. They smell great, too — the folks at Cake Town are nothing if not masters of all things doughy. But when you finally get one of them out to the car, you may be in for a surprise. Because despite their appearance, these babies are not filled with jelly, custard or even sweetened beans, but a cabbagey vegetable stew. Oddly, this is not disappointing. 551 S. Western Ave., (213) 480-1010.

UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS

On weekends, the line to get into Dae Sung Oak usually winds out onto the sidewalk, and the tabletop barbecue, the kimchi stew and the naengmyon, cold buckwheat noodles with raw stingray, served in the posh upstairs dining room are pretty good. Unusually for Koreatown, where restaurants tend to be inward-looking fortresses, there is a view out onto the busy street below. The panchan includes little bowls of spicy pickled crab. But the soups here, the mainstay of the downstairs dining room, are even better than the upstairs galbi, especially a version of sullongtang that fixes the specific mellowness of beef brisket with the loving exactness Raphael once applied to memorializing his lover’s smile. 2585 W. Olympic Blvd., (213) 386-1600.

HAVE A RICE DAY

Bibimbap, a dish of rice mixed at the table with vegetables, chile paste and perhaps a fried egg, is reputed to be the Korean staple most suited to the Western palate, the dish that may someday be as popular among Californians as the pizza or the teriyaki stick. Yet some of the worst Asian meals I have ever eaten have come from Koreatown bibimbap specialists, including the mall restaurant whose 20-item bibimbap tasted like leftovers scraped from a fast-food salad bar, and a popular bibimbap chain whose gooey specialty proved uniquely inedible. The kitchen-sink aspect of the dish tends to play into the worst tendencies of a particular type of cook. But in the right restaurant, bibimbap can be fairly spectacular, the flavors of the vegetables heightened and melded by the heat of the chile paste, the different intensities of crunch becoming almost contrapuntal under the teeth. I especially like the variation called dol sot bibimbap, served in an ultraheated stone pot that creates a crisp, slightly scorched crust where the mixture hits the stone and infuses the rice with a subtly pervasive smokiness. The bibimbap at Jeon Ju, a restaurant from the southern area of Korea where the dish originated, is perfect. And don’t miss Jeon Ju’s spicy cod stew, which may be the best in Koreatown. 2716 W. Olympic Blvd., (213) 386-5678.