2 posts tagged “kalbi”

I keep going back and forth with Korean food. I find a place, like it, then realize there's a better place, and so on. Eventually I'll run out of restaurants (or else I'll find the "ultimate" Korean restaurant).  Yesterday I went to Shilla (in Gardena -- I am sure there's a million Shillas out there). When I first moved to the South Bay I really liked it. I haven't been there in a while, but went yesterday because we had a friend visiting from Ventura County who says he can't get a decent ethnic meal up there.  I guess Olive Garden and Acapulco aren't ethnic enough.

Bbq

We ordered bulgolgi and kalbi. The stuff that looks like marshmallows is rice cake (the stuff I call rice logs).  There are enoki mushrooms stewing in the drippings pan. Later on the waitresses put noodles and kimchi there too.

The raw egg in the upper left hand corner of the picture goes in this pot of soondubu:

Soondubu

It has pork and shrimp in it. I didn't try it, but it looked good.

Parks3

955 S Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90006

OK, so I have been told that I only write bad things and make comments about how things suck. So here's an entry that's only positive. OK, so mostly positive.

So I didn't have high expectations of this place, given its location in a really busy Vermont minimall. It's by a black goat restaurant that I've been dying to try and a Korean gift store where I've gotten blankets and picture frames.

This place is modern, well-ventilated, and a real blur of activity. As most of the reviewers on Yelp have noted, Park's is a little pricier than most of the other barbecue places around K-town, but not I didn't think it was shockingly so. I think galbi was $32 and the serving was pretty generous. We ordered two types of galbi, one marinated and the other non-marinated. The non-marinated one came out first (to avoid getting mixed up with the marinade). The meat looked very unusual. It was very red, came out in a long sheet attached to the bone, and had unusual holes punched in it. It was dee-licious. I remember a few years ago there was a commercial that called something "chocolate nirvana." This was beef nirvana.

I am usually a big fan of the non-marinated beef. I kind of figure that if a non-marinated meat is tasty that shows the quality of the beef. This was a damn good cow. The marinated one was equally tasty. 

Parks4

The side dishes were pretty standard: chapchae, a cooked beef side, wiggly tripe (ick), Korean potato salad (ick), kimchi with raw crab. We paid $3 for napa kimchi and another $3 for an egg custard. I LOVE EGG CUSTARD. It's eggy, oniony, and fishy at the same time (OK, I know that sounds weird, but it really does work.) So we got out of the place for about $100 for three people. Not too bad I guess. I think the Yelp people probably order alcohol, and since I don't drink that's probably what kept the cost down. I saw some other tables with soju and Hite bottles galore. I'd rather have an egg custard.