Koreatown's Top 40

SUDS

Through the streets of Koreatown, foaming, unchecked rivers of OB and Hite beer flow. So it is only fitting that Koreatown play host to a brewery of its own, a brew-pub sporting enormous vats of Koreatown Ale and Sunset Red, as well as concert-volume Madonna videos and enough spinning, flashing lights to make Disco Stu a happy man indeed. The menu of fried calamari and cheeseburgers could make Rosen Brewery more or less the T.G.I. Friday’s of Koreatown, except that as far as I know, T.G.I. Friday’s has never served much in the way of spicy sea snail salad. 400 S. Western Ave., (213) 388-0061.

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 >

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

ROE VERSUS

O-Dae San is undoubtedly the best fish restaurant in Koreatown, a vast, sleek space with a Korean-style sushi bar running the length of the dining room, waitresses in traditional dress, and a parking lot filled with more $150,000 Mercedes sedans than you’ll find anywhere this side of Stuttgart. There are subtleties to O-Dae San’s long menu that we wouldn’t even try to address. Because, peasants that we are, we can never tear ourselves away from the ever-fascinating al bap, a big bowl of sushi rice frosted — frosted! — with a half-dozen different kinds of fish eggs, laid out in contrasting streaks radiating from the center of the bowl like rays from the sun. Plus, you get to say: al bap. But still, we know nothing goes better with a brimming glass of soju than something like O-Dae San’s hwe do bap, which is to say bits of impeccably fresh sashimi topped with vinegared slivers of cucumber, strips of toasted seaweed, black sesame seeds, tossed at the table with sweet bean sauce and a raw egg. We may be peasants, but we’re not crazy. 2889 W. Olympic Blvd., (213) 383-9800.

LOVE, PYONGYANG STYLE

If you are nostalgic for the days of old-fashioned Communist hospitality, you could do worse than to visit this Los Angeles branch of Morangak, a North Korean restaurant popular in Seoul. Nobody will bother to seat you, and one suspects that the waiter who does eventually show up at your table has just lost a game of rock, paper, scissors. You wouldn’t think it was possible to disdainfully toss down a heavy bowl of lava-hot kimchi stew without actually injuring anyone at the table, but these guys are pros. Still — there are those pheasant dumplings. And the complex fragrance of the wild mushroom soup. And the severely attractive bibimbap. This could be one of the best meals you’ll never love. 3377 Wilshire Blvd., No. 100, (213) 381-8243.

HOOFIN’ IT

The basic unit of consumption at Toad is the combination meal for two, a sort of porcine tasting menu designed to take you on a tour of the tiny black pig and all of its constituent parts: red-cooked trotters, sautéed pork skin with vegetables, maybe a simmered innard or two. But you are here for barbecued pork belly, the meaty, streaky, especially succulent strips of fat meat that you sizzle into crispness yourself on a tabletop grill. When they are crisp, you roll the squares of belly into a slippery square of rice noodle with scallions, swab the bundles with what appears to be an elegant dust made from powdered beans, and dip them into a chile-spiked Korean ponzu sauce. The little belly rolls are fantastic things, spicy and sweet, soft and crisp, and crammed with enough vegetables to make even Dr. Dean Ornish smile. 4503 Beverly Blvd., (323) 460-7037.

BOSSAM BUDDIES

Han River, named after the waterway that cuts through Seoul, is a nice place, with inexpensive lunches, a delicious panchan of fried fish cake, and an urbane roster of sophisticated dishes that go especially well with soju or even bekseju, which is soju flavored with ginseng. The monkfish sautéed with bean sprouts and a pickled kiwi-like Korean fruit is compelling; the iced baby octopus noodles are fine. But what brings in the crowds is Han River’s truly wonderful version of bossam, a dish of steamed, pressed pork, flanked by lightly pickled leaves of cabbage, a fiery root-vegetable kimchi, and an amazing dipping sauce that involves vinegar, chiles and what appear to be highly salted fish hatchlings no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. 2561 W. Olympic Blvd., (213) 388-5999.

HAUTE

Korean cooking, at least as it is presented in Los Angeles, is not an especially refined cuisine. Korean restaurants here tend to be either homey or raffish, Mom’s cooking or sophisticated bar snacks. Nobody seems especially concerned with royal delicacies from the Koryo empire: Korean restaurants, even the expensive ones, serve people’s food. The Kaesong-style restaurant Yongsusan may be in a class by itself, an elegant warren of discreet, private dining rooms, a redoubt of what seems very much like Korean haute cuisine. I have never tasted anything like the bo sam kimchi here, a green, round cabbage that has been hollowed out and stuffed, then wrapped up again and left to ferment whole. Roast pork is almost Italian in its voluptuousness, noodles are light as air, and the oyster porridge is divine. 950 S. Vermont Ave., (213) 388-3042.