Tag: korean restaurant

Blomster’s opens second Korean diner ‘popup’ in California wine country
It doesn’t seem to make sense that a 40-plus-year-old San Francisco Bay-area brunch joint is sharing valuable restaurant space with a fusion diner known for its Korean fried chicken and Los Angeles galbi with mac and cheese. It might be even more surprising that the owner of the Korean diner has never stepped foot in Korea, yet the breakfast baron has racked up many frequent flyer miles to Korea — particularly, Jeju Island.
David Blomster prepares to cut the ribbon for his second Korean diner, located in Santa Rosa, Calif., on Nov. 17, 2015. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)
David Blomster opened his second Dick Blomster’s Korean Diner officially Nov. 13 as the afternoon and night shift in Don Taylor’s Omelette Express, located in the historic Railroad Square district of Santa Rosa, a city about an hour north of San Francisco. During the ribbon-cutting party Nov. 17, I caught up with Blomster and Taylor, as the latter was pouring shots of homemade 12-year-old ginseng-infused soju for his business partners to celebrate the new collaboration.
Don Taylor, owner of the Omelette Express, shares shots of ginseng soju with business partners as he celebrates his new business venture with David Blomster. (Jeff Quackenbush photo)
Blomster opened his first pop-up Korean diner, called Dick Blomster’s, in Guerneville, California, in 2012, sharing space with Pat’s Diner, a Guerneville institution since the 1940s. For the first six months or so of his enterprise, Korean-American chef Eugene Birdsall helped him develop the menu for the restaurant and got the concept moving. Local residents embraced the restaurant so much that after a couple of years as a renter, Blomster made enough money to buy Pat’s Diner outright. A “popup” restaurant can be a one-off event, a market test or a business strategy to save money on rent and startup costs. So it’s unusual for a popup to buy its own landlord.
A rustic yet classy way to celebrate a new Korean restaurant venture: 12 year old ginseng soju. (Jeff Quackenbush photo)
“I knew there was a need in West County for Korean cuisine,” Blomster said, referring to western Sonoma County, located just west of Napa Valley. At the time of his debut in 2012, the nearest Korean restaurants to Guerneville were Tov Tofu in Santa Rosa, which is a half hour drive east of Guerneville, or Bear Korean in Cotati, which was about 40 minutes away until it closed in 2014.
David Blomster is the restauranteur behind Blomster’s Korean diner. (Jeff Quackenbush photo)
Although Blomster knows that popup restaurants are a hot trend in culinary circles, he doesn’t believe the term fully explains his restaurant concept.
“I don’t like being referred to as a popup, because popups lack permanence,” he said. “I consider Blomster’s Korean Diner a permanent popup.”
Blomster’s expansion to Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square district brings it among several high-end hotels, but there are few Asian restaurants within walking distance.
Taylor reached out to Blomster a few months ago to see if they could find a way to share his space with the Korean diner.
“This is a 40-year-old family restaurant that is not open at night, in the middle of Railroad Square,” Taylor said. “It’s a fabulous location.”
Blomster didn’t have to order up any Korean-style decor for his new popup. Omelette Express is already covered in Jeju-inspired items from Don Taylor’s frequent trips to Korea. (Tammy Quackenbush photo).
Blomster couldn’t ask for a better place for his second location. This Omelette Express restaurant is partially decorated with mementos from Taylor’s frequent trips over the last 15 years to Jeju Island, a popular vacation spot off the bottom of the South Korean peninsula. As a former Santa Rosa City Council member, Taylor has been instrumental in fostering Santa Rosa’s sister city relationship with Buk Jeju–Jeju City, the capital of the island province.
“I love Korean food,” Taylor said. “I am excited that David was making Korean food more accessible. He figured out how to make Korean food successfully.”
Blomster’s menu is partly inspired by his college years. He lived near L.A.’s Koreatown, with its mix of traditional Korean restaurants and more modern, hip noodle places.
“I wanted a playful combination of Korean, American and noodle dishes,” he said. “Ingredients like kimchi, ssamjang and gochujang are a starting point for the other items on the menu. We have a few traditional Korean dishes, like tteokbokki, which is a Korean street food, but I don’t claim to be or desire to be a traditional Korean restaurant.”
With dishes like mac and cheese, fried pickles and fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on menu, this Korean diner is equally inspired by Blomster’s roots in the U.S. heartland.
“I grew up in the Midwest, where ‘ethnic food’ was spaghetti,” he said.
One of Blomster’s favorite signature sides is buttered bread: sourdough slathered with butter and fried on a griddle. That’s inspired by his Detroit hometown.
Blomster’s Korean-style restaurant commands a 4 out of 5 rating on Yelp.
Dick Blomster officials opened his second Korean Diner on Nov. 13 at Don Taylor’s Omelette Express, located in the historic Railroad Square district of Santa Rosa, California. (Jeff Quackenbush photo)
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Dick Blomster’s Korean Diner
112 Fourth St.
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
www.dickblomsters.com
707-525-1690
Hours: 5–10 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; 5–11 p.m. Friday and Saturday
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December 2, 2015
Review: Dick Blomster's Korean Diner, Guerneville, Calif.
Finding California wine country’s hottest new 한식 hanshik (Korean food) can be as challengingly fun as discovering next pinot noir wine sensation, but it’s equally well worth the effort.
Dick Blomster’s Korean Diner, formerly known as Hi Five Korean/American Diner, began pleasantly piquing the palates of locals and visitors to the Russian River Valley winegrape-growing region of western Sonoma County an hour north of San Francisco late last year.
You’ll find the diner on Main Street of the riverside community of Guerneville. Yet you won’t spot a large neon “Blomster’s Korean” sign. That’s because this Korean hot spot is a popup restaurant in Pat’s Diner, a fixture of downtown Guerneville since 1945. And it shows in the decor of the 70-seat diner, which shares space with the bar next door.
The name change is only a a month old, but the birth of Blomster’s came in December 2012. According to a waiter who served us at the counter, the owner plans to purchase the building. That’s a sign of success and future job security.
The owner, David Blomster, and chef Eugene Birdsall are alumni of Boon Eat + Drink, which is located next door to the current restaurant. Chef Birdsall was blessed with a Korean mama who taught him how to make traditional Korean cuisine.
The best description of Blomster and Birdsall’s take on Korean cuisine is fusion diner food. It’s American diner food with Korean ingenuity.
The menu was a bit confusing for Hubby and I to navigate. We couldn’t tell for a while whether many of the items were separate or part of a combo.
I normally don’t buy appetizers at a restaurant, because the main course usually is more than enough. Yet this appetizer menu was intriguing enough to warrant ordering more than one.
Hubby really wanted to try “Hand-cut Seoul Fries” ($5). The homestyle fries were smothered with minced garlic and topped with toasted Korean chilies, green onions, thin strips of roasted seaweed, and black and white sesame seeds.
Accompanying the basket of fries was a small dish of kimchi-topped aoli for dipping. As someone who loves to dip French fries in mayo, this aoli was a fun kick in the pants.
The minced garlic on the fries had been massaged with 고추가루 gochugaru (spicy red pepper powder), doubling the lip-tingling fire. I liked the savory saltiness brought by the the seaweed rather than just salt.
Shortly after we put in the order for the Seoul Fries, the entire restaurant smelled like garlic. I wouldn’t be surprised if our clothes smelled of garlic when we walked out. Our breath certainly did and the diet coke and water I drank with my meal did not put a dent in that breath.
Korean pickling is something I’ve come to love in the past decade and a half, but traditional Euro-American cucumber pickles are my comfort food of yesteryear. So I really wanted to try “Fried Sonoma Brinery Pickles with Sausalito Springs watercress” ($5). The batter was delicate and crisp, and the pickle slices were not soggy or greasy.
With more kimchi aoli for dipping, this was not a low-calorie start to our meal.
For the main course, I ordered “LA Kalbi Mac & cheese” ($10). Instead of the typical yellow cheddar macaroni sauce — or otherworldly neon orange-yellow of box-based preparations — this dish topped the hollow pasta elbows with with white cheese sauce.
Topping the noodles were Los Angeles-style 갈비 kalbi (barbecued beef ribs), generous garnish of fresh 고수 gosu (cilantro or coriander), sliced green onion, buttered toast. The onion and cilantro thankfully provided extra character to what can be a bland noodle dish.
The kalbi was grilled — with the smokey char marks to prove it — yet the meat was still tender and succulent, while still being cooked completely. A hint of fruitiness, particularly cherry, in the marinade makes me think it contained Dr. Pepper or a similar soft drink. That certainly would match the diner theme of the decor and the menu.
Hubby ordered Blomster’s–Hi Five’s signature dish, “KFC (Korean Fried Chicken/Crack)” ($15). The teriyaki-style barbecue sauce on the crisp-breaded leg and wing was thankfully more honey-like in flavor and texture, rather than overly sweet.
Accompanying the chicken was a soy, ginger and vanilla coleslaw, garnished with sliced radish.
Dick Blomster’s Korean Diner
16236 Main St., Guerneville, Calif.
707-869-8006
Hours: Sunday–Thursday, 5–10 p.m., Friday–Saturday, 5–11 p.m.
October 26, 2013
Restaurant: Korean BBQ Plus!, Concord, Calif.
Serendipity brought me to this restaurant on the east side of the San Francisco Bay area. I had an appointment with friends in Concord early one February morning. By noon, our meeting was over, and I was hungry.
Rather than waiting until I returned to more familiar territory to eat, I followed my instinct — and my insistent stomach. Tapping “Korean restaurant” into my smartphone map app pointed me toward Korean BBQ Plus!. It was less than a mile from where I was and from an onramp for Interstate 680, my ticket home. That recommendation hit the spot.
One of my brave friends came with me. She has very limited experience with Korean food and felt more comfortable with an “expert.” Since I had not done any preliminary research on this restaurant, I had no idea what we would find.

Korean BBQ Plus! is tucked into a small shopping center and was a little challenging to find. The restaurant shares a building with a small Korean grocery store and a Mexican restaurant. Across the parking lot is a larger Mexican grocer.
As we walked in the Korean restaurant, I quickly noticed that almost every table was full at 12:30 on a Friday afternoon. That was a promising sign.
The waitress quickly brought menus and cups of hot barley tea — a beverage I’ve had to ask for at other restaurants. That was promising sign No. 2.
The lunch menu had a good assortment of standards such as 비빔밥 bibimbap (a bowl full of meat or dubu (tofu) as well as vegetables over rice), 닭구이 dak gui (spicy sweet marinaded chicken) and 된장 찌개 doenjang jjigae (fermented soybean paste stew). However, my friend and I ordered 돌솥 비빔밥 dolsot bibimbap (bibimbap in a hot rock bowl; $12.95) off the dinner menu.
Among the dozen-plus bowls of 반찬 banchan (side dishes) that came out first were baechu kimchi (cabbage kimchi), radish kimchi, egg omelette with ham, cucumber pickle, mung bean sprouts, soybean sprouts and soy sauce–marinaded sweet potatoes.
Dolsot bibimbap came with topped with bulgogi, cucumber pickle, soybean sprouts, enoki mushroom, shredded carrot, mushroom, spinach and a raw egg cracked open on top.
The raw egg excited me way too much, because it was an authentic touch. Most Korean restaurants I’ve visited in the Bay Area fried the egg sunny side up then add it to the bowl, so only the yolk needs to be cooked on the side of the hot bowl.
My friend was far more excited about the crunchy rice at the bottom of the bowl. It gets that way when the cooked rice fries in a little oil put in the bottom of the very hot bowl.
I squirted onto the fixings in my bowl a generous amount of 고추장 gochujang (spicy red pepper paste) from the squeeze bottle. (Red squeeze bottles on Korean restaurant tables likely aren’t filled with ketchup.) My friend made a tamer mix of soy sauce and gochujang.
It also came with a small bowl of 미역국 miyeok guk (seaweed soup). The soup had a full body to it with a little touch of beef.
Between the dolsot bibimbap, generous banchan and the soup, I left the restaurant satisfied. Korean BBQ Plus! is a good ambassador for traditional Korean cuisine.
As we were finishing our meal, my friend asked me, “Would you come down here again just go to this restaurant?”
“No,” I answered honestly. Concord is a 90-minute drive from my home, and there is a traditional Korean restaurant just 20 minutes away.
However, when I’m in Concord area on business, I will arrange my schedule so I can return for lunch or dinner, hopefully with my patient photography-loving husband in tow.
Is there a Korean food experience that you would drive (or even fly) a long distance just to experience repeatedly? Tell us about it in the comments section below.
Korean BBQ Plus!
1450 Monument Blvd
Concord, CA 94520
(925) 680-9090
Hours: Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.–10 p.m.
koreanbbqplus.com
February 23, 2012
Review: Korean Village Wooden Charcoal BBQ House, San Francisco
The restaurant was nearly empty when we sauntered in at 1:45 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. Two men were engaged in an animated conversation in a Chinese language at a table on the opposite side of the restaurant, their words echoing off the walls and the mirror that stretched the length of one side of the restaurant and over the din of the sports color commentators on the big-screen TV.

Because of the name of the restaurant, we ordered broiled 불고기 bulgogi and broiled barbecued chicken (닭구이) from the lunch menu, which bundles the items with 밥 bap (rice), 반찬 banchan (side dishes) and a bowl of soup. Both entrees were $9.99 each.

The banchan were typical Korean restaurant fare: baechu kimchi, lightly pickled cucumbers, marinaded soybean sprouts, marinaded mung bean sprouts, soy sauce–brined jalapeños, and two kinds of daikon kimchi (one was fresh and the other was made from dried daikon). They were tasty but not surprising.

Miyukguk, a simple Korean seaweed soup (Tammy Quackenbush photos)

The surprise for us were the small bowls of 미역국 miyukguk, which is a Korean seaweed soup made with wakame in a simple broth. Of all the soups in Korea’s culinary repertoire, few are more Korean than miyukguk. I have to give the restaurateurs credit for serving such a bold, unusual dish to a couple of non-Koreans, since many non-Koreans are still somewhat squeamish about seaweed in its leafy form.
Korean women recovering from childbirth are served this soup morning, day and night for the first couple of weeks after giving birth. Some Korean women are also compelled by well-meaning relatives to eat lots of it leading up to childbirth, since is it believed to purify the blood and help women with lactation.
The waitress set the bowls down, I looked at my husband and said “Happy Birthday,” though neither of us have a birthday coming. He doesn’t like seaweed in soup or 김밥 kimbap (sushi).
“It’s good for me, right?” he asked me while stirring the leaves and looking skeptically into the bowl. He ended up liking the flavor of the soup.
The service was prompt. The waitress took our order shortly after we sat down and brought the banchan, rice and soup within a few minutes. The bulgogi and grilled chicken arrived a few minutes after that.
The bulgogi was quite dry, and the smoke flavor from the real wood oven was pronounced. We dipped the meat in the miyukguk and wrapped it in moist rice, which helped.
The chicken, however, was moist, the “special house sauce” more obvious than on the bulgogi, and the smokiness more subtle.
Korean Village Wooden Charcoal BBQ House, or Wooden Charcoal BBQ, is located in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond neighborhood at 4609 Geary Blvd.
It is easy to find from Highway 1, commonly known as 19th Avenue, a major north-south thoroughfare on the west side of the city. If you’re traveling north on 19th Avenue (coming north from San Francisco International Airport and San Jose on Interstate 280), turn right on Geary Boulevard. The restaurant will be on your right between 10th and 11th avenues.
Making left turns on a number of streets of San Francisco is difficult. If you are traveling south on Park Presidio (from Napa-Sonoma wine country and the Golden Gate Bridge), you can’t turn left onto Geary. Travel a block south of Geary, turn right onto Anza, turn right at 14th Avenue then turn right a third time, onto Geary
This restaurant is worth the hastle. Parking is available along Geary or side streets.
Geary Boulevard has a string of Korean shops, grocers and restaurants. Wooden Charcoal BBQ is about a block away from longstanding Korean barbecue master Brothers Restaurant and several blocks from the Korean establishments in Japantown.
September 22, 2011
VIP Restaurant, Anchorage, Alaska
On trips to see family in Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, I make it a point to visit VIP Restaurant at least once. It’s located in the Valhalla Center, a retail and office building amid the Korean business cluster along West Northern Lights Boulevard.
There are a few other Korean restaurants in the city, but I have a personal connection to this one. A relative built the center the 1970s and leased the space to the restaurant in the early 1990s.
VIP Restaurant is on the ground floor of the Valhalla Center on the far right side. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)
VIP Restaurant — 영빈관 in the Korean name means “house for special guests” — serves a large variety of Korean food, particularly soups and stews (탕 tang and 찌개 jjigae). VIP also has a selection of broiled fish, beef and pork dishes.
For those reluctant to try Korean food, also offer a modest selection of Chinese restaurant favorites, such as curry chicken, fried rice and Mongolian beef.
My husband and I brought my mother-in-law and stepfather-in-law for a weekday lunch. The restaurant was not crowded, and we received attentive service.
Land of the Morning Calm in the Land of the Midnight Sun: A 13-banchan display was traditionally reserved for royalty, but this is not a snooty, royal cuisine restaurant. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)
The waitress brought out 13 반찬 banchan (appetizer plates), the most I’ve seen at any Korean restaurant I’ve visited so far in the States.
One of the banchan highlights was the seaweed salad. My husband normally eschews chewing seaweed in its various forms. This was first seaweed salad he said he enjoyed, partly because the type of plant used was the more delicate wakame seaweed (which is called 미역, miyeok in Korean) and partly because the savory-sweet marinade pleasantly masked the taste.
The main course came with a small bowl of 동민 dong min radish kimchi broth flavored with green onion and beef. That was another first for me on this side of the Pacific.
Between the four of us, we ordered 갈비 galbi (grilled beef ribs), two variations of 돌솥 비빔밥 dolsot bibimbap (hot stone bowl filled with mixed vegetables and rice) and Mongolian beef.
Ordering galbi ($12.99 lunch) and Mongolian beef ($11.99 lunch) allowed a side-by-side comparison of Korean and Chinese foods. The galbi was grilled wang-style (“king” cut with thin meat along two- to five-inch-long ribs) rather than L.A.-style (a thin flanken cut) more common to Korean-American restaurants.
The galbi had the typical Korean sweet touch, likely from fruit juice or corn syrup in the marinade. The Mongolian beef was stir-fried with ample green onion and certainly was more savory than the galbi. My Korean cuisine–averse builder-relative scarfed up the galbi and barely touched the Chi-Am dish.
The dolsot bibimbap dishes — served at this established in thick metal bowls rather than earthenware — hit the key cue: a blazing-hot bowl to crisp the rice in sesame oil and keep the food warm throughout the meal. The latter is nice for a typical Anchorage August day: in the 50s Fahrenheit and raining.
Kimchi bibimbap with the required fried egg. The other veggies are hiding behind the kimchi (Jeff Quackenbush photo)

My husband ordered dolsot kimchi bibimbap ($14.99). He noted for our Korean cuisine–cautious tablemates that cooked kimchi takes on a mellower flavor from its banchan brother.
Royally Jeonju-style bibimbap: I decided I preferred having kimchi on the side this time around. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)

For my hot bibimbap, I chose to eat like a queen: 전주 Jeonju bibimbap ($15.99). This specialty of Jeonju incorporates cues from Korean royal cuisine. My dish was overflowing with veggies: shredded laver, carrot, radish, soybean sprouts and gosari. My taste buds appreciated a generous squirt of bibibimbap 고주장 gochujang (a sweetened version of Korea’s go-to spicy red pepper sauce) from the tabletop squeeze bottle.

VIP Restaurant
Valhalla Center, 555 W. Northern Lights Blvd, Ste. 105, Anchorage, AK 99503
(907) 279-7549
Hours: Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sunday, 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/vip-restaurant-anchorage
August 13, 2011
Review: New Garden Restaurant, Los Angeles area
Written by Taeyang Yoon
Rowland Heights restaurant known for jajangmyeon
Continuing our journey down the ‘Korean’ section of Colima Road in Rowland Heights, we stop at one of my favorite places. I have been coming here on a fairly regular basis for a few months now. This restaurant is renowned for its ‘joonghwa yori’ (Chinese-Korean cooking), the people in the know go crazy over their jajangmyun (jajangmyeon) and tangsuyook – and I am one of them.
I found this place by asking some grocery store clerks nearby and almost unanimously they recommended this restaurant – New Garden Restaurant. It’s on Colima Road near the Paso Real Avenue intersection.
The restaurant itself is fairly large; it has a main dining area with about 100 seats and also a couple of private banquet rooms. The decor is clean and somewhat dominated by the two large big screen Samsung TV’s on either side of the dining area. Also, you can always find some customers slurping on some jajangmyun noodles at anytime of the day.
A huge plus for the restaurant is that the staff is excellent, probably some of the best service I receive in a ‘Chinese’ restaurant – they are very attentive and courteous. As soon as you sit down, they bring you some hot tea. After you order the food, they immediately serve you the dice onions with chunjang sauce (AKA jajang sauce) and joonghwa style cabbage kimchi. The main dishes come out not too long after the order. Just the scent of the food being served make the salivary glands instantly work in overtime, not unlike the Pavlov’s dogs.
Jjajamyun with kimchi and radish banchan served with a side of extra black bean sauce. (Photo by Taeyang Yoon)
The beauty of jajangmyun is in its simplicity. It’s just jajang sauce served over thick noodles. The sauce is made with onions, squash, and beef stir fried in black bean paste (chunjang) sauce which is thickened with some corn starch. Some gringos might call this the Chinese spaghetti, and they are not too far off in saying so. But we all know where the Italians got their noodles from…
The New Garden’s version of jajangmyun can be described as perfect sauce with machine extruded noodles. A true dish of jajangmyun is served with ‘sutamyun’, which is made by hand-pulling and beaten over the worktable. This type of noodles gives it a superior mouth-feel, but artisans who can create such noodles are getting rare today. At any rate, the New Garden’s offering gets a top-notch score in flavor, texture, and in preparation. The sauce is not sugary, not greasy, and not salty. It has just the right amount of savoriness, or umami. The noodles are cooked just right, although it is a shame that this great sauce does not get the deserved sutahmyun!
Their tangsuyook also deserves a very high praise. The meat is perfectly deep-fried with no funny, oily aftertaste. The meat actually stays crispy and the longer it sits in the sauce, the coating on the meat become chewy. At most restaurants, the tangsuyook goes soggy after a few minutes… not here. Also, to note, the sauce is not overly sweet as it often is at other places.
The ending verdict is that if you are a fan of jajangmyun, one of Korea’s national foods, or want to try it for the first time, New Garden Restaurant in Rowland Heights is one of the best.
New Garden Restaurant
18740 Colima Rd.
Rowland Heights, Calif.
(626) 912-9588
[googleMap name=”New Garden Restaurant”]18740 Colima Rd., Rowland Heights, CA[/googleMap]
December 1, 2010
Cocobang, San Francisco
Posted by Tammy
Cocobang is located at 550 Taylor Street near San Francisco’s Tenderloin district within walking distance of Union Square and the Civic Center.
Owners Huh Joon-young and Hur Joon-seok, operating as Daebak Enterprise Corp., have created a small restaurant with about a dozen tables or so. (The city of San Francisco says the restaurant has less than 1,000 square feet, including the kitchen.) Yet our party of five could be seated comfortably. Our two tables were next to the front windows, so we had plenty of natural light to see our food. If we hadn’t been sitting near the window during daylight hours, it would have felt darker.
Some of the reviews from Yelp.com suggest a number of the patrons don’t show up or leave sober:
You don’t come here for the food unless you plan on drinking soju and beer, or if you have a craving for their fire chicken which is good on its own, but more amazing when you have a couple of beers and shots of soju in your belly.
Ok, it’s exactly what everyone says. Only been here when NOT sober..and it’s not bad. It’s not LA korean food good either. But it’s not like we’re in a k-town…. Although, I bet this place would be ok sober.
I considered it a good sign about interest in the restaurant that several people were queuing outside before it opened the Sunday evening I visited Cocobang. Since we arrived a half-hour before the 5:30 p.m. opening, we went to a coffee shop around the corner and came back just in time to be among the first patrons so we grabbed a seat closest to the window.
Cocobang’s decor includes black tables with paper soju advertisement place mats featuring singer Lee Hyo-ri’s smiling face and a large back-wall video projection screen. Food selections include Korean restaurant standards such as the kimchi fried rice and bibimbap as well as some less-common items such as Korean fried chicken. The restaurant has long hours of operation — 5:30 p.m. until 2 a.m. weekdays or 4 a.m. on weekends.
Korean network TV playing on the large screen gave the restaurant a sports pub feel without the play-by-play chatter. When I visited with family members, a variety show was rolling out one K-pop and other musical acts, prompting a flood of questions about Korean pop culture. If you don’t know any Korean — or Korean-English slang — walking in, you might pick up a phrase or two.
Dragging family to a restaurant for a review allowed me to sample five different dishes. Cocobang doesn’t necessarily serve dishes “family style,” but it does have a few “combo” selections with multiple dishes each.
The banchan (Korean appetizers) featured kimchi, spicy odeng (white fish cake), zippy mung bean sprouts and cubed daikon radish marinated in vinegar and sugar (or mirin). The daikon was the most refreshing banchan I’ve tasted in a long time.
I put in an order a half plate ($8.95) of Korean fried chicken. I ordered the regular version (rather than the hot/tangy or the garlic versions). Korean fried chicken is not simply a knock-off of Southern fried chicken. Thanks to the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gourmet and Saveur, Korean fried chicken is starting to compete with the classic, all-American fried chicken for plate time.
I noticed a subtle hint of Korean curry powder in the thin, crispy crust. Thanks to double frying, the chicken was cooked perfectly, without charring of the batter and little greasiness in the underlying meat. Colonel Sanders would be either proud or insanely jealous.
Bulgogi ($13.95) is a Korean restaurant favorite, because even the most spice-phobic person can try this savory-sweet sauteed beef dish, commonly served on a hot plate with onions, green onions and sesame seeds. My father-in-law likes the dish for that reason, and Cocobang’s version pleased his picky palate. The salty, savory, sweet components typically found in the marinade were distinguishable and had the familiar balance I’ve tasted on both sides of the Pacific. Traditionally, the marinade includes soy sauce, sesame oil and Asian pear puree.
The sauteed chicken (dakgogi) ($13.95) was grilled in a similar manner seemingly with the bulgogi marinade. It didn’t have the spicy gochujang marinade common to most Korean chicken preparations, so it’s another good option for those who see the phrase Korean food and presume they need a gallon of water to quench the fire.
The bibimbap ($9.95) was served in a large bowl with a sunny-side-up fried egg, spinach, mung bean sprouts, mushrooms and beef and a bottle of bibimbap gochujang, a sweeter, tamer, less viscous version of the spicy red pepper paste found in a number of Korean dishes. Bibimbap is another Korean dish many Westerners enjoy. It has a lot of veggies over the bap (rice), the amount of hot sauce can be controlled and playing with the food is required to mix the rice, veggies and meat.
My husband ordered kimchi fried rice (kimchi bokkeumbap) ($9.95). Normally, the restaurant normally adds Spam processed meat to the mix, but the kitchen made him a pork-free version. The rice was not overcooked and mushy. My husband said it “had texture, almost al dente.”
The menu features other Korean standards, such as spicy grilled rice noodles (tteokbokki), kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae), and barbecued beef ribs (kalbi).
Parking in San Francisco is notoriously inhospitable because the City purposely refuses to build new parking structures, but Cocobang is next door to a small parking garage so you can drive down for your Korean food fix if you aren’t within walking distance.
Another perk (besides the good food) is their amazing opening hours. Most of the nearby restaurants are only open until 10 or 10:30 during the week and 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Cocobang stays open much later to catch the very late-night crowd.
July 21, 2010
Public Voting Ends Soon for The Miele Guide
As The Miele Guide grows in popularity as a source for great restaurants in Asia, become a part of it by voting for your favorite restaurants. Public voting ends on May 19th, 2010.
May 4, 2010
I'll See Your Balloons and Raise with… Balloons
We’ve had a little war brewing in my neighborhood. I don’t live in the middle of the city. In fact, it’s a dead end road in a snug mountain nook. So there aren’t many restaurants compared to other parts of the Seoul Metro area. But it’s still a microcosm of a method of business practiced in Korea that I still can’t understand.
I’ve mentioned before that queues are like velcro. Small businesses are that way too. Galbi restaurants tend to group together in packs, as do cell phone stores, as do camera shops. My ‘hood has maybe around ten restaurants, which is small for Korea. So you’d think that if one type of restaurant opened another would open to fill another niche.
But no.
A couple of years ago, we got our first pizza place. A short time later, another pizza place opened. They both went out of business.
A cheap galbi place opened right next to another cheap galbi place.
For my four years in this neighborhood, we only had one bakery, Paris Baguette. And that could barely be supported by our neighborhood. But that didn’t stop a Tous Les Jours bakery from opening down the street. Soon after TLJ opened, we saw that our old Paris Baguette shuttered up and left.
A few weeks later, I was walking down to TLJ for something when an old lady commented, “They’re building another one here. Crazy!”
I looked, and a new Paris Baguette was being set up right next to TLJ. But that’s not the funny part. I see this happen all the time.
When Korean businesses open, they place balloons out front, blare music, and have people chat away on microphones. Sometimes they have clowns or dancing “doumi” girls. Eun Jeong had noticed on her way to work that Paris Baguette was having their “Grand Open” with balloons and sales girls. When she returned from work, TLJ just couldn’t stand it. They went out and got balloons for their store too.
It’s like children with lemonade stands, folks.
April 28, 2010
Stone Korean Restaurant, San Francisco
This is what I traveled for an hour and a half one way to taste. Yum!
Posted by Tammy
Stone Korean Kitchen is the newest Korean restaurant in San Francisco, officially opening in November 2009. To be fair, I waited four months for any mistakes or deficiencies common to all new restaurant ventures to be resolved.
The restaurant is located in Embarcadero Center office and retail development in the heart of San Francisco’s Financial District. That helps why explains the hours of operation — 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday–Friday and closed on Saturday and Sunday — are not very tourist-friendly. Yet the restaurant is an easy walk across the street from the Ferry Building, through which boatloads of commuters and tourists pass daily from the north San Francisco Bay counties.
I prefer to take a ferry to San Francisco from the Marin County city of Larkspur, because parking is difficult to find and can be expensive. San Francisco and other California cities are adopting a transportation-management policy called “congestion pricing,” which increases parking fees during high-demand times to discourage traffic congestion from drivers circling the streets looking for open spaces and to encourage walking, biking or riding mass transit.
As is increasingly common, the lunch, dinner and take-out menus are available on the restaurant’s website. I’m grateful for that, because I like to take my time studying a menu but don’t like to waste the waitstaff’s time.
I arrived at the restaurant at 11:50 a.m. just before lunch rush and ordered japchae and kimbap to get an idea of how the kitchen treats Korean classics. The menu also has a few fusion options, such as bulgogi sandwiches.
A view of Justin Herman Plaza from the front of the Stone Korean Restaurant. The landmark Ferry Building clocktower and palm trees along the boulevard are visible.
The restaurant is small, so the indoor seating is somewhat limited. As catching a sunny day in San Francisco during winter is rare, particularly this year amid week upon week of rain, I opted for the alfresco seating on Justin Herman Plaza. From that warm, breezy location I could see the row of palm trees that line the Embarcadero boulevard along the San Francisco waterfront.
My order arrived within five minutes. The japchae had the common mixture of marinated beef, mushrooms, spinach and carrots with cellophane noodles. It was a tasty dish, but the sauce seemed a little light on sesame oil and heavier on soy sauce, garlic and black pepper. For those who don’t like the heavy hand of sesame seed oil in a number of Korean restaurants, Stone Korean Kitchen’s japchae might be what you’re after. The accompanying white rice was perfectly cooked, not crunchy or mushy.
My husband shared leftovers with his co-workers that afternoon, and this japchae didn’t fail as a palate-pleaser for Korean food initiates.
Want some kimbap?
There were several packages of kimbap — one of my favorites — stacked at the front desk just inside the front door. How could I resist? The marinated beef, pickled daikon radish, egg and garlic-marinated spinach rolls were some of the best kimbap I’ve had in a long time.
It was certainly worth taking a day off from work for the four-hour car and ferry round trip to visit Stone Korean Kitchen. Now, if only the restaurant were open on Sundays.
Stone Korean Kitchen
4 Embarcadero Center, Street Level, San Francisco, Calif.
(415) 839-4070‎
www.stonekoreankitchen.com
Social network connections: Facebook and Twitter
March 21, 2010