San Maul Boribap 산마을 보리밥 (Mountain Village Barley Rice) continues to be one of my top five favorite restaurants in Korea. It’s also a favorite to most any traveler I take there. In this case, my brother Chef Ben was visiting town, and he was craving their smoked chicken (tastes like bacon) and pajeon (crispy and chock full o’ seafood). I love most everything they make there. Another interesting dish is the Dotorimuk 도토리묵 (Acorn Jelly), which I’ve profiled before. Despite its first impression, it’s a lovely salad with onions, cucumbers, lettuce and carrots with a dressing of sesame oil, garlic, gochugaru and wild sesame with the namesake acorn jelly thrown in. It tastes country, which is why I like the restaurant so much. It’s what I think of when I talk about Korean peasant cuisine. This is the stuff that’s not popular yet. It’s not being promoted by the government. But whenever I introduce someone to it, they are surprised that they had never had anything like this before yet it tastes comforting.

San Maul Boribap is the flagship restaurant of a growing village of places on this lonely road at the base of Gwanak Mountain in Anyang. The others have a similar theme but specialize in different dishes. Despite San Maul’s recent boom in popularity, I’m happy to report that the quality has not declined at all.

[googleMap name=”San Maul Boribap 산마을 보리밥”]South Korea Gyeonggi-do Anyang-si Dongan-gu Bisan 3(sam)-dong 38-1[/googleMap]