There is this really good and legit Korean restaurant in the LES (Lower East Side) of Manhattan that we’ve been to a couple of times now. It’s called Song 7.2 and you know it’s legit because when you go in, it’s 95% Korean people.
So my experience with Korean food is limited. I mentioned the home-cooked Bulgogi in an earlier blog but that’s about it. Turns out that Korea (I’m assuming North and South) has a lot in common with other Asian countries – food-wise that is. They oftentimes serve soups and spicy food. Here’s an explanation for both. Soups are inexpensive to make and most poor or underdeveloped countries make soups for that reason. Think about it, you go to a steakhouse or fancy French restaurant and order a big hunk of meat - that sucker is going to cost you an arm and a leg. Order the bowl of soup and you’ve spent 5 bucks. So, soups are cheap and versatile. You can throw pretty much anything in them and it’ll come out tasting good.
The other commonality is spicy food in Asian countries. This actually applies to all countries that have hot and/or humid weather. Can’t remember where I read or heard this but the reason those countries have hot food is a defensive mechanism against the heat. Eating spicy food allows people to sweat and thus cool their body temperature. See, you didn’t know you were getting a biology lesson as well. So hot countries eat spicy food (all of Asia, Central America, North Africa) and cold countries don’t (anything way above or below the equator, think Norway). They do the opposite, they try to retain heat in their bodies.
So, to get back to the Korean restaurant we tried, they served delicious soups and spicy stuff. I can’t really mess with spicy food but I was a trooper and braved it anyways. I had tofu stew/soup with vegetables and pork, and Mark had the Bulgogi stew. It’s a stew/soup with Bulgogi pieces of meat added to it. The broth itself tastes of the same flavors as the Bulgogi marinade. The spicy food I had wasn’t an actual dish (although my stew had a peppery kick to it) but was an appetizer instead. You might have heard of Kimchee, which is pickled spicy cabbage. It’s quite delicious really but spicy. I know lots of regions serve a small spicy appetizer to get the appetite going (even in Romania sometimes), so this was no surprise. In addition, they serve a fresh and crunchy daikon and cucumber salad, dressed with a sweet vinaigrette. Daikon is a long Asian radish, so if you know what a regular round red radish tastes like, daikon is pretty much the same thing. The fresh daikon salad helps mellow out the spicy and steaming hot food.
The only drawback to eating at that restaurant is the dessert. They don’t actually make dessert themselves but collaborate with the place next door, so we ordered dessert and the neighbors made it. We ordered a Nutella crepe (I know, we were in a Korean restaurant…) and were so freakin’ disappointed. The place sells all sorts of crepes I guess, however someone should tell them that the same batter should not be used for both sweet and savory crepes. We were served an overcooked (dry, dry, dry) whole wheat crepe that didn’t have sugar added to the batter (think whole wheat anything) smeared with a tiny layer of Nutella. Atrocious is the only word that comes to mind. So yeah, the Korean food at this place is bomb, but the dessert just plain bombs.
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