Next-Level Dining: Koreatown Diversifies Its Namesake Cuisine

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Korean Chicken Place photo by Joshua Lurie

By Joshua Lurie
For dineLA.com

Los Angeles has long housed the largest population of Korean people outside of the motherland, and Koreatown is the undeniable epicenter. In the past few years, the neighborhood, which is loosely bracketed by Pico Boulevard on the south, Hoover Street to the east, Beverly Boulevard up north and Crenshaw Boulevard out west, has seen an increased proliferation of regional Korean food and specialized dishes, adding to the already impressive culinary landscape.





DHA RAE OAK
Chef Chung Mi Rae and husband Kim Gil Rae, who travel to Korea once a year to keep pace with trends, have gathered a hodgepodge of specialty dishes, but also a snapshot of modern Korean cuisine. As a result, Dha (everyone) Rae (gathers) in the Oak (house). Skewers of duck, featuring striations of rosy meat and fatty white skin, crisp up over the kicking charcoal flame. Dipping condiments consist of either simple salt and pepper or soy sauce with spicy mustard. Slices of green tea-infused pork belly are tucked into sheets of cooked cabbage with crunchy, pickled daikon, soy-soaked jalapeno and garlic shavings, chile-soaked radish and a pungent sauce involving chile and tiny shrimp. Knife-cut noodles of various colors and flavors, including wheat, red bean and sweet potato, factor into a steaming cauldron of soup with cucumbers, daikon, scallion, clams and chewy sea squirts. The pièce de résistance, a duck cooked inside an egg-shaped clay vessel, requires four hours notice and features an entire bird stuffed with glutinous purple five-grain rice, which absorbs the residual jus, along with ginkgo nuts, seeds, slabs of sweet potato, chestnuts and walnuts.

- Dha Rae Oak, 1106 Western Ave., 323.733.2474





JUN WON
When chef Jung Ye Jun opened Jun Won 18 years ago, she specialized in cuisine from Chungcheongnam-do in southwestern Korea and named the restaurant for her son Jun. Nearly two decades later, she now runs a nearby panchan emporium and Jun leads the restaurant. Enter through back, which features a yellow sign with peeling blue letters. The interior "roof" resembles a country cottage, and paper lanterns light the room. It’s no surprise that the matriarch’s complimentary panchan continues to shine. You might receive pickled eggplant strips, or perhaps the most advanced panchan in the city, green peppers stuffed with a carrot-and-onion-flecked pork meatball that’s egg battered and fried. Jun Won has six different pan-fried fish, all butterflied and bronzed, including atka, an oily, bony fish with a burnished crust, and off-menu sea trout with tender white flesh that pulls easy from the backbone. Bean curd stew arrives in a bubbling orange bowl, rife with spicy kimchi and spoonable over steamed sticky rice studded with barley, beans and peas. Sautés are another highlight, particularly the octopus incarnation, with tender tentacles bombed with scallions and chile paste, sprinkled with sesame seeds.

- Jun Won, 3100 W. 8th St., 213.383.8855




KOREAN CHICKEN PLACE
On a Koreatown side street, Seoul native Hyeoung Kim offers dishes like dried cuttlefish with peanuts and silkworm chrysalis soup, but most people venture to his two-year-old establishment for chicken, either BBQ, fried or “spicy.” At least they did, until he introduced cola-soy-sauced chicken, a rarely seen dish from a city in Korea’s deep south, called Andong. He fills a wide, shallow bowl with a nearly overflowing soup of springy glass noodles, carrots, broccoli, cylindrical rice cakes, sweet potato chunks, onions, pine nuts, spicy jalapenos and pieces of scored chicken that arrive infused with a sweetish broth. Now customers vacillate between spicy chicken wings, which are slathered in chile sauce, and the milder alternative. To make the decision even tougher, the cola-soy chicken is also available spicy by special request. And we didn’t even mention beer butt chicken.

- Korean Chicken Place, 618 S. Serrano Ave., 213.388.6990





LAON DINING
In the past eight years, chef Jenee Kim has built up serious culinary equity in Koreatown, first by franchising Park’s Barbeque, a popular Seoul concept that uses Prime beef, and added pork-centric Don Dae Gam before opening adjacent LaOn Dining, which specializes in “enjoyable” shared plates from Korea’s Chosun Dynasty. Compelling yori (cooked) dishes include beef tartare wrapped in rice paper with raw quail eggs and scallions, juicy Wagyu beef fritters, “open-flame” abalone served on the half-shell with ginkgo nuts and dazzling stone pot of sizzling rice topped with four colors of tiny tobiko (flying fish roe), bursting salmon roe and creamy sea urchin. Salt-baked fingerling potatoes are the size of grapes and arrive with spicy green bell pepper/green peppercorn dipping sauce. A tabletop charcoal grill called a hwa ro cooks thin-shaved beef tongue and well-marbled skirt steak, to name two cuts, plus a parade of vegetables, all dippable in salt and lemon juice. LaOn Dining is the rare Korean restaurant that serves dessert, including green tea donuts.

- LaOn Dining, 1145 S. Western Ave., 323.373.0700





SUN HA JANG
Location number three just might be the charm for Sun Yu, a restaurateur with two prior addresses who’s become best known for meat that cooks on tabletop grills that resemble convex lenses. A cow has prime real estate on the green sign, and you’ll find cook-it-yourself options like boneless beef rib, brisket and small intestine, but most people visit Sun Ha Jang for duck. Roasted duck is rosy and rimmed with fat, which melts away on the garlic-topped grill. Maillard (no, not mallard) reaction crisps the meat. The same thing happens with spicy seasoned duck, which features white skin and contributes even more fat to the cauldron with the kimchi stopper. Pluck duck from the bubbling oil and wrap it in lettuce with pickled onions, crunchy radish and scallions. At the end, they add steamed white rice, kimchi, scallions, radish, sesame and poppy seeds, which all contribute to devastating fried rice. A bowl of scallion-showered bean sprout soup rounds out the menu.

- Sun Ha Jang, 4032 W. Olympic Blvd. 323.634.9292





YOUNG DONG
The unusual name at Ho Bin Choi’s 14-year-old soup specialty house refers to a district in central Korea. Photos of him are all over the flagship’s walls, pictured with Korean celebrities, and Choi’s also got a branch in Buena Park. On Wilshire, the backlit, wall-mounted menu features 14 options, the best of which are variations on sul lung tang. Beef bone soup varies around town, but here, it’s clear and fairly light, with a modicum of noodles and a choice of cuts. The version with tender sliced beef cheeks is especially good. The soup is purposefully bland to start, but the table provides ways to layer flavor, including scallions, salt, pepper, chile, pungent kimchi (cabbage, scallions, radish) and steamed white rice. Remove the meat and it’s dippable in soy jalapeno mustard sauce. If you prefer to have your flavor fully formed, order spicy brisket soup with juicy shreds, scallions, crunchy bean sprouts, broth-soaked daikon cubes and a chile-flecked beef broth that builds in intensity with each spoonful. Keep the complimentary pitcher of cool barley tea handy.

- Young Dong, 3828 Wilshire Blvd., 213.386.3729



Dha Rae Oak, 1106 Western Ave., 323.733.2474

Jun Won, 3100 W. 8th St., 213.383.8855

Korean Chicken Place, 618 S. Serrano Ave., 213.388.6990

LaOn Dining, 1145 S. Western Ave., 323.373.0700

Sun Ha Jang, 4032 W. Olympic Blvd. 323.634.9292

Young Dong, 3828 Wilshire Blvd., 213.386.3729

For more information about Koreatown's nightlife, shopping and cultural sights, visit the discoverLosAngeles.com Koreatown Los Angeles Guide.

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