Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong Is the Restaurant Koreatown Didn't Know It Needed

You won't find Wagyu or Kobe cuts here, as you might at Park's down the road, but no one should decry the sheer quality available relative to the inexpensive price. There are no sheets of rice paper or sesame leaf wraps to be found, either, though the slightest dip into a small bowl of coarse sea salt is plenty satisfying. The waitresses are handy enough with the meat-shearing scissors to suggest the management might be hiring former seamstresses.

You could supplement your meal with a bowl of cold noodles swimming in more of that cold and tangy radish broth, though this time the broth is tinted red by floating chunks of watermelon and a dab of fermented chile paste, oddly but deliciously enough. The beef tartare, tossed with slivers of cucumber and sweet, uber-ripe Asian pears — which happen to be in peak season around this time of year — is an excellent refresher. The complementary soybean paste stew, called doenjang jjigae, is practically a meal in itself, fortified with bits of cooked brisket, fresh tofu and an ungodly amount of diced chiles.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Grilling rib-eye

Location Info

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Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong

3465 W. 6th St.
Los Angeles, CA 90020

Category: Restaurant > Asian

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

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More About

• Anne Fishbein
• Koreatown
• Kang Ho Dong
• Foods
• Meat

The closest thing to dessert here might be the dosirak, an item listed on the menu as the "lunch box." It's basically a simplified bibimbap — a few scoops of rice, sprouted mung beans, seaweed, bean curd, kimchi and a whole fried egg — which arrives unmixed, stuffed inside what resembles a gold-colored cookie tin. Your server opens the lid and shows you the goods before closing the whole thing up and shaking the holy hell out of it, furiously enough to make the Varnish's bartenders look noodle-armed. The result is a kind of gooey fried rice saturated with egg yolk and pulverized kimchi. Your table will scrape the box clean.

Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong is the barbecue restaurant that Koreatown didn't know it needed — a uncompromising import that combines the impeccably sharp service and top-tier meat of more refined places like Genwa or Soowon with the rustic, atavistic pleasures of somewhere like Soot Bull Jeep. (Incidentally, Baekjeong might now claim the title of the smokiest restaurant in town — those large, metal ventilation hoods overhead might as well be functionless.)

Conventional wisdom holds that the days of high-end steakhouse, replete with white tablecloths and flower arrangements the size of compact cars, are hearing their death knell. Could the end of fancy Korean barbecue be far off? It's hard to think otherwise with the crowds amassing outside here — if you mentioned Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong as the most difficult restaurant in town to snag a table on a Saturday night, few people would doubt you.

Does that mean more cheesy corn, more buttery cuts of short rib, more violently shaken rice boxes — and, admittedly, much smokier clothes — are in our immediate future? If only we could be so lucky.

KANG HO DONG BAEKJEONG | 3465 W. Sixth St., Koreatown | (213) 384-9678 | Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-1 a.m.; Sat.-Sun., 4:30 p.m.-1 a.m. | MC, V | Beer, wine and soju | Valet or street parking | Beef or pork combinations, feeds 2-3, $39.99-$44.99.

See more of Anne Fishbein's photography from Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong.