Traveling

When I flew into Los Angeles last Tuesday, the region had been suffering from a heat wave, an unprecedented change-up from the usual June Gloom, at least that was how the mild, entitled dwellers of the Westside and beach communities felt about it.  But the heat broke that Tuesday. "Oh, look," said Dan my host, "we've been running the air conditioner all week. This is the first evening we can turn it off and open the windows."

And the evening was cool, just like I remember those Los Angeles summer nights, with a breeze lifting the curtains in the upstairs guest room. It was pleasant enough to eat outdoors in the patio, though I needed the light cotton sweater I'd brought.

Bites and nibbles

One of the nicest things about Korean cuisine is the array of banchan, or little dishes of goodies, that are served with the main entrée.

At restaurants, these come free with the meal, and are the chef's choice - they may vary from day to day. I've never been able to determine whether the banchan selection is based on your chosen meal, or whether it's whatever the kitchen happens to have that day.

Banchan are perfect for eating with rice, but they can be eaten by themselves, too. It's not rude to tuck right in while you're waiting for the main course. At the table, the little dishes are to be shared, and most people eat communally, directly from the little plates.

NIght out in Koreatown

Since our son is visiting us for a week or so, we'd planned a weekend trip to Jun Won, a great home-style restaurant in Koreatown that I wanted to explore. They're famous for spicy steamed casseroles of fish, recipes the owner's grandmother taught him, and for the good panchan, or complimentary side dishes his mother makes.

Saturday we went to the movies and had pizza on the Westside,  so we figured we'd go to Koreatown on Sunday night.

But I guess I got my wires crossed. We arrived at the parking lot only to find the place closed. We quickly consulted Yelp on our smartphones.  There was a nearby place that specialized in smoked duck, how about that?

Closed.

"It's kind of a change-up," our son said, "but what about El Parian? It's not far, and on weekends they have birria."

Guadalajara stewed goat isn't exactly Korean steamed cod, but we're nothing if not flexible when it comes to exploring LA's diverse food feasts. We piled into the car and headed off to Pico and Union.

Closed, the accordion gate locked over a dark storefront.

Where to go? What was nearby, and open on a Sunday night?

So hot today

It was almost 100 degrees in Topanga. I was craving cold Korean noodles, naengmyun. Today I thought I'd try another place, Chilbomyunok, which is on 6th Street in the same area as Agassi Gobchang and Kang Hodong Baekjeong.

Like those places, it's a big modern place, with slick, granite table tops and updated fixtures. The tables and chairs are roomy and elegant, and there's plenty of space between tables, so you don't feel jammed together with other diners. 

Still, it was a little less homey than Yu Chun Chic Nang Myun, and in the late afternoon, smelled a little like chlorine cleanser. 

A bowl of hot broth to start with

A really nice young man waiter brought me a bowl of hot broth when I sat down. It was strong and savory-salty.

They offer a combo deal, with a smaller bowl of noodles accompanied by a side of meat. I asked the waiter for his recommendation, and I chose a combo with naengmyun and beef galbi.

Three panchan - the one on the right is potato salad with raisins

The noodles arrived, and I was surprised at how different the dish was what I'd had at Yu Chun Chic Nang Myun. 

These noodles were very slender and white, not dark brown buckwheat. Here, slices of Asian pear and white radish, and big chunks of cucumber floated in the cold broth. The broth was tangy, but not as sweet as at Yu Chun, and there was less beef. 

I loved the way the pear and radish slices looked so similar that I didn't know whether I'd get a pungent crunch or a sweet yielding bite until I chop-sticked it into my mouth. I liked the broth, but I missed the sesame seeds and the deeper flavor that dollops of gochujang gave the bowl at Yu Chun. Here, they had a plastic dispenser of spicy Korean mustard, and a few drops added a nice tingle.

Beef galbi

The galbi was tasty, but too rich and hot for a scorching day like today. So I savored my cold noodles and sipped my Hite beer, and packed the beef up in a container for later.  

It was good, but I think the next time I crave cold noodles, I'm going back to Yu Chun Chic Nang Myun.

Fire burn and cauldron bubble

I think I first had soon tofu in a modest little joint in a college town, years ago. It was a hot soupy stew with chunks of tofu in it. It was okay, I guess, but nothing special.

So when I began my exploration of the food and culture of Los Angeles' Koreatown, I didn't pay much attention to the restaurants that specialized in soon tofu.

But I didn't realize until recently that soon tofu, a dish that is popular throughout the Korean diaspora and even in South Korea itself, may have actually been invented in Koreatown.  Similar to the great Los Angeles French-dip sandwich debate, there are two established restaurants vying for the name of being the first to sell soon tofu.

Cold comfort

Cold noodle soup - Dongchimi gooksu

Our southern California climate can be unpredictable. One week it can be cold, and the next a hot wind blows in from the desert and temperatures rise. Though the marine air tempers the heat by beach, over the mountains in the Valley it can be 90 degrees in March.

Such dry heat can sap the appetite. When the Santa Anas blow, we need something cool and refreshing to nourish us.

Cold noodle soups and salads are a staple of Korean cuisine, and there is a surprising variety of different tastes and styles, ranging from smooth and creamy to intense and spicy. Here's a sampling of good dishes to help beat the heat.

Home style cooking

Acorn jelly, or dotorimuk

Mapo Kkak Doo Gee is a tiny little restaurant on a strip mall in Koreatown known for its home-style cooking and excellent panchan, the small dishes that accompany a Korean meal.

It's easy to decide what to eat, because on the wall is a huge poster with photos of all the dishes on the menu. Mapo is known for two specialties - kkak doo gee, or pickled cubes of daikon radish sauced in mild chili, and "dough flake" noodle soup. Soojebi are noodles made by pinching off bits of dough and flattening it with the fingers - irregularly shaped bite-sized noodles.

This day, I wasn't hungry enough for noodle soup, so I ordered fried sole. Before the fish came, the nice older lady server brought a plastic cup of cold barley tea and nine little dishes of panchan. This is quite generous for a lunch time meal, and especially for a solo diner. Most dishes on the menu cost around $9, so getting this many panchan is a great value.

I can identify most of the dishes, starting in front with acorn jelly, or dotorimuk, and marinated seaweed. In the second row, from left, cabbage kim chee, steamed broccoli in soy sauce, and the signature pickled daikon. In the third row, also from left, the peculiar Korean-style macaroni salad, vegetable pancake, something I can't identify, and wilted cabbage with doenjang, or soybean paste.

I'm posting the photo I took of the fish, but I apologize for the quality. I took four shots and they all came out bad. But it gives you an idea of what you get - three whole fish, minus heads and tails, perfectly pan-fried. It couldn't have been more simply done, served with a wedge of lemon. It's tricky teasing fried fish off the bone with chopsticks and the ubiquitous Korean long-handled tablespoon, but it was worth it.

As for the panchan - I loved the broccoli, marinated seaweed and the wonderful pickled daikon. It was crunchy and sweet and the chili added flavor rather than heat. I've had acorn jelly before and wasn't excited by it, but I gamely gave this version a try. It's comically difficult to pick up with chopsticks, but I finally got it to my mouth. The sauce, a garlicky soy-sesame spiked with red pepper flakes, was good, but the jelly itself was tasteless to me.

I was intrigued by the macaroni salad, which was similar to that served with Hawaiian plate lunches. Mayonnaisey and slightly sweet, it included elbow macaroni, chunks of red cabbage, and raisins. It was odd, but I couldn't stop nibbling at it.

One interesting detail was the rice - mixed with different grains and black-grained rice, it was lavender-colored and had an expanded dimension of flavor and texture beyond white rice.

This is the kind of Korean food made at home by grandmothers and aunts. It's simple and delicious, and served with love.

Mapo is on West 6th Street at Normandie. Parking is tight in the lot - try to find a meter on the street.

Pink Saturday - Shopping for pink

Daiso Japan is a Japanese discount store on the ground floor of the MaDang Plaza mini-mall on Western just north of Wilshire in Koreatown, and it's as pretty and as pink as you could wish. Just in time for Beverly's Pink Saturday!

Everything inside costs $1.50 unless otherwise marked, proclaim signs in Korean, English and Spanish, giving the nod to the unique multiculture of Los Angeles. You can get warm fuzzy terrycloth socks, colored crystal bead room deodorizers, laundry baskets, bound blank-book diaries, paper lanterns, hair clips, wrapping paper, and crazy Japanese candy.

And almost everything is PINK!! The place is a schoolgirl's heaven!

You can also get fabulous brightly colored silicon kitchenware, and I couldn't resist a buying shocking pink wire whisk, a chartreuse vegetable peeler, some cute cat-patterned rice bowls, and a pink mandoline slicer - who knows how long it will last in use? But isn't it fun? And it only cost $11 for all of it!

The rest of the stores in Madang Plaza are just as attractive to young people - and I mean very young. When I was there, a double line of six year olds were being led in formation by a teacher on an outing to see the Lego Movie at the third floor cinema. There's one restaurant that operates on the gimmick of serving the favorite lunchbox snacks of Korean kids - targeting young adults who are nostalgic for grade school. Downstairs boba shops and a Beard Papa creme puff shop were both filled with back-pack toting high schoolers.

I felt a little old among all this youth, but, hey - now I have a shocking pink whisk to cook with!

A hot mess

One of the most well-known dishes served in Korean restaurants is known by the fun alliterative name of bibimbap, a bowl of rice with an assortment of vegetable, meat and other toppings. In restaurants it's often served in a hot stone pot called a dolsot, and comes to the table hissing and sputtering so furiously you can feel the heat of it radiating in your face.

A one-bowl dish, bibimbap is a good option for a solo diner - it's not easy to do Korean barbecue for one, after all! Gamja Bawi in the food court at Koreatown Plaza on Western Avenue is known for serving one of the best and cheapest versions in town.

Chilling

It's in the low 80s today, can you believe it? I'm chilling and sipping a cool mango smoothie in a Koreatown coffee shop with a palm- shaded patio.

A chicken in every pot

Though the common impression of Korean food is robust, meaty and chili-seasoned, seared in smoky charcoal flames and washed down with copious amounts of harsh alcohol, there is another side to Korean food. Perhaps as a direct reaction to these sensory excesses, Korean cusine also includes simple and healthful recipes.

Sam gye tang is Korean chicken ginseng soup, and like chicken soups of other cultures, it's considered a traditional remedy for those who are weak, ill or need restoration of the soul and palate much sapped by gustatory dissipation.

Ginseng is said to boost metabolism, reduce stress, soothe respiratory ailments, and invigorate the appetite, and sam gye tang is often recommended in the heat of summer. This sounds paradoxical, but in summer our appetites are often subdued, so hot food spurs circulation to the internal organs, restoring vigor.

Gut bomb!

Grilled beeliner at Mykonos Restaurant

Gourmet is the word for an exacting and refined food critic, one with high standards and discernment, and disdain for food that is not of the highest caliber and art. Gourmand is the word for someone who likes to eat. My family and I are unabashed gourmands. Recently we were trying to count the different kinds of protein we've eaten in the last two weeks. It turns out to be quite a menagerie.

While in the Tampa Bay area, we dined at our favorite Greek restaurant in Tarpon Springs. Grilled octopus, pan-fried perch, grilled whole beeliner (vermillion snapper) and Greek-style grouper. Then, Our Son cooked a roast leg of lamb for Christmas dinner with beer-boiled gulf shrimp for appetizers.

Gather ye rosebuds

If you drive down Wilshire Boulevard in mid-city Los Angeles, you wouldn't expect to find an oasis of serenity in this urban setting, nor in the steel and glass corporate buildings that line this, one of the busiest streets in North America.

But there are a lot of paradoxes in Koreatown, and one of them is that this robust and vivid culture also values the quiet serenity of time spent in contemplation and conversation with friends. When you step in from the busy Wilshire sidewalk into Hwa Sun Ji Tea and Coffee, you feel your pulse slow and your mind ease.

Firewater

Soju is distilled from starches like rice, potatoes, or tapioca. It's the best-loved tipple in Korea - and also in Los Angeles' Koreatown. It's got a rough, sweet, medicinal bite that makes you almost wince.

It goes great with steamed pork belly with garlic, jalapeno and pickled chile radish, wrapped in Napa cabbage leaves.

Egg salad with a pop

L.A.'s Koreatown is exciting not just because it's a vibrant immigrant community with a fascinating ethnic culture to explore - it's exciting because it's an amalgam of multiple immigrant communities, and from this it has created its own fascinating culture.

The best-known example of how cultures are embraced and adapted into a new dimension is the famed Kogi truck; a catering truck selling short rib tacos and kim chee to young hipsters hanging out in karaoke clubs.

Korean cuisine is assertive, and when Korean cooks take on other cuisines, something bold, brash and vivid happens; strongly flavored and served in abundance.

Miracle of the fishes

I was exploring Los Angeles' Koreatown - that busy, bustling neighborhood infused with multiple layers of the city's history. Once LA's most exclusive address, it went from show-biz glamor to run-down slum, to besieged and burnt out during the '93 unrest. And all the while since the 1960s, the Korean immigrant community thrived and grew here, transforming fusty old hotel dining rooms into hip young anju bars, karaoke clubs, and upscale shopping malls.

Eating too much in Koreatown

Dan Sung Sa

We could hear the shouting from the drunk sitting outside Dan Sung Sa when we got out of the car. On a bright autumn Saturday, we found a meter outside this Korean pub known for its bar food like skewered chicken gizzards and kimchee pancakes.

Now, two o'clock in the afternoon, the bar was shuttered, and the drunk sat, a 40 ounce in a crumpled bag on the pavement beside him, yelling at passersby.

"Hey, mister! You're a writer, huh?" he shouted when he saw us crossing the lot. "I can tell by looking at you, you're a writer."

"You nailed it, brother," [The Man I Love] replied. "You got me."

We quickly skirted the corner and headed west on 6th Street, taking in a whiff from the garbage dumpster behind Dan Sung Sa as the street dipped gently down.

Windsor not

Having just spent some cozy days in London, Paris and Venice, you might think we sought out the clubby British ambiance of The Prince as a refuge from the culture shock of our return to LA.

After all, The Prince is old, has a dignified English heritage, opening in the 1920s as the Windsor, a high-end restaurant in an exclusive apartment building across from the Ambassador Hotel.The entrance is discrete, understated - a simple brass plaque marks the door.

Its curved, red upholstered booths welcome you. Leaded windows, deep crimson Victorian wallpaper and figures of armored knights lend a uniquely British flair. Vintage lighting and antique paintings lit by brass picture lights - it all make you think you've gone back to an earlier era, one that appreciates traditional European culture and continental cuisine.

You'd be wrong.

The Prince, in Koreatown, is the quintessential LA experience.

Smokin'!

During the 1920s, Los Angeles west of Downtown was the place to be. The stretch of Wilshire Boulevard west of Westlake Park was developed with fine hotels and high-rise apartment houses with names like The Windsor, The Langham, The Asbury and other names evoking the aristocracy of Olde England. Hollywood elites such as Norma Talmadge and Gloria Swanson lived in fine apartments, and opulent movie palaces like the Westlake showed first run films. This neighborhood sported the famous Brown Derby restaurant, and the elegant Ambassador Hotel, with its swank nightclub, the Coconut Grove.

But by the early 1960s, the expansion of L.A. and a changing economy brought decline to the neighborhood. The Ambassador Hotel, still remembered for its elegance, gained a different place in cultural history in 1968 when Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in its kitchen after winning the California Presidential primary election. By1989 the once elegant hotel had closed.

At the same time, U.S. immigration law changes in 1965 brought millions of Korean immigrants to Los Angeles. The neighborhood, with its declining real estate values, became an affordable place to settle. By 1974, there were some 70,000 people of Korean descent living in what was now known as Koreatown.

I don't know when Soot Bull Jeep opened but it sure looks like it's been around for a long time. According to the City Directories in the Los Angeles Public Library, it used to be Joe and Nino's Pizza Place in the 1960s. But today, Soot Bull Jeep, as its sign says, is known as a natural charcoal Korean barbecue house.

There's nothing fancy about the place. It looks like a cheap diner. You walk in off the street into a dark room with dim fluorescent lights, with formica-topped tables, each set beneath huge steel exhaust flues. The walls are covered with a textured siding that looks like fake red bricks, and the floor with reddish ceramic tiles. The tables are set with metal chairs upholstered in red vinyl. There's a haze in the air, and the scent of charcoal smoke.

As you walk in, a waitress wearing a white uniform with a black apron motions you to a table. Each table has an open grill set in the center. She turns on the gas and shovels a few lumps of charcoal onto the fire, then sets a grill atop the flame. She tosses a plastic folder with a single page menu in front of you. While you consider the offerings, she brings chopsticks wrapped in paper, a handful of small plastic dishes, and a couple of plastic glasses with ice cubes in them.

No - don't drink the ice water. It's there for a reason.

Order a big bottle of Korean beer - OB or Hite - instead. By now, the charcoal is glowing, and flames are flickering in the grill. The waitress comes back and asks what you want.

Marinated short ribs are a pretty good choice. You can also get other cuts of beef, including tender sliced beef tongue. You can also get marinated pork, or chicken, or seafood such as shrimp or eel. For about $19 you get a large platter of protein. We were a party of three - one order of short ribs and one of marinated pork was plenty for us.

A whole array of small dishes appear at the table. There's a bowl of clear broth with something white and starchy floating in it. There's another bowl with slivered scallions in a sesame-flavored oily dressing. Other bowls hold a pulverized pinky bean paste, pickled cabbage in deep red chile, threads of pickled daikon and stir-fried spinach in sesame oil. Whole garlic cloves. Dark liquid soy sauce. Cucumbers in a pale orange liquid. There's also a small steel bowl filled with short-grained rice, and a plate with fresh lettuce leaves.

The waitress brings the platter of meat and, with a pair of long steel tongs, quickly lays it out on the grill.

If it looks like you know what you're doing, she leaves you alone. If she thinks you don't get it, she'll come back and grab the tongs, flipping the meat when it's ready and even telling you how to eat it. She also carries a pair of heavy-duty shears, which she'll use to clip and snip large pieces into bite-size bits. Our short ribs included the boneless slices of beef plus two chunks of ribs - after we ate the delicious slices our waitress returned to snip the membrane from the bony pieces and pull the chewy meat from the bones.

The little dishes are called banchan or panchan. They're intended as accompaniments to a meal. They range from condiments to pickles, to vegetables, tofu, and sometimes noodles.

The marinated pork was spicy and tender, and left a burning tingle in the mouth. The starchy rice and pickled vegetables were a nice cooling contrast. The typical practice is to tear off pieces of lettuce leaf and wrap the morsel of meat with a bit of pickle or smear of bean paste to eat by hand.

You have to be vigilant and watch your food cooking - don't overcook it or the waitress will come by and flip it for you. Use the tongs to turn the meat instead of your chopsticks - you don't want to flip raw meat with your chopsticks and then put them in your mouth later.

As you sit there, the smoke rises, despite the pull of the heavy duty exhaust fans that thrum and roar above you. The smell of charcoal suffuses your clothes and hair, especially if the place is busy and all tables are cooking at once. You may even catch a few flying sparks - don't dress in your finest when you come here. If drippings or a fatty, grill-stuck morsel catch fire, the waitress quickly douses the flame with a strategically-placed ice cube - see, that's what that glass of ice is for!

This is good late-night food, also good hangover food, with strong flavors and hot spices. Eating here brings out some wild primal urge to cook bloody meat over a roaring fire. It's not for the faint of heart. Unlike the glossier Korean barbecue joints where the grill is gas-fueled, clean and safety sealed, Soot Bull Jeep has a touch of danger that appeals to your inner cave-man.
When you're finished and pay your tab, the waitress sends you off with a stick of melon-flavored gum to clear your palate.
Alley-Oop never had it this good.