You are here: Home / Archives for korean

Eighth Street Soondae

by // 1 Comment

Blood sausage may sound macabre to some, but I couldn’t stop pining over it after I heard about the Korean version called soondae. I realize this may shock some people who are used to seeing veggie friendly food on the site, so if you get woozy at the mention of blood, it’s best to click away.

Soondae is not your dressed up forcemeat artfully disguised by some garnish, some sauce, or even a fluffy mashed potato or two. The menu item that I pointed at was a dish consisting of a monstrous pile of sliced blood sausage, a few bites of pig ear, some slices of what I’m guessing was tongue, and a few slices of some liver-type meat.

The taste of blood in food is a hard one to describe to someone who hasn’t had it. It’s a mild, muddy taste and has a strange richness that sticks to your teeth. This may not be selling the delicacy to the squeamish, but it’s really not that bad. Soondae, the blood sausage, is actually a mixture of blood and clear noodles stuffed into a wonderful casing full of snap. The slices of sauasge themselves were pretty mild, but I think you’re supposed to gussy them up with the provided condiments: sea salt sprinkled with Korean chili pepper, or an extremely salty and tangy fermented shrimp paste.

eighth street soondae

The other slices of offal were similarly bland, but still had their own distinctive characteristics. The pig ear was rich and floppy. The liver had that iron-rich flavor. The tongue was probably the least offensive bite of meat, as long as the biter wasn’t squeamish about something else’s tongue being on theirs.

Included with my order was the usual array of panchan and a bowl of soup. The soup was quite good and when I looked around, I realized it was what most people were ordering, but maybe a more filling version. The soup had a deep, meaty flavor and its texture was exquisitely rich and a bit milky, like a tonkatsu broth, only not as salty.

Considering I ordered the ‘small’ version of the offal sampler plate (I’m assuming that’s what it was) and it was enough for three meals, I’ll probably either enlist the help of friends the next time I visit 8th Street Soondae, or order the big bowl of soup and stuff that everyone else who was dining alone seemed to have.

Eighth Street Soondae
2703 West 8th Street Los Angeles
CA 90005-1285
(213) 487-0038

Al Bap @ A-Won

by // 1 Comment

al bup @ A-Won

I went to A-Won a few weeks ago. Though I enjoyed the massively large bowl of sashimi salad, I wasn’t impressed. I went back last week with the lovely Jessica of eat.sip.chew and we both ordered the al bap. I loved it.

The al bap at A-Won is a gigantic bowl of rice topped with plentiful helpings of fish roe, uni, seaweed, preserved fish, pickled radish, and a few other treats. It was a fantastically colored flavor party in my mouth. The eggs popped delicately between my teeth and every mouthful was delightfully decadent.

I should have taken Jonathan Gold’s word the first time when he recommended the al bap in his LA Weekly writeup of it, but for some reason, I ordered something different my first time there. I’ve learned my lesson. From now on, it’s al bap all day long at A-Won.

A-Won Japanese Restaurant
913 1/2 S Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA‎
(213) 389-6764‎
(park in the lot or on the street)

Korean Sushi @ A-Won

by // Leave a Comment

A-Won (Ktown)Last week, I was craving sushi, but not just normal sushi. I wanted something different. Enter A-Won, a Korean owned Japanese restaurant in Ktown.  It also helped that I was working from home that day and it was only a few minutes’ drive away.

Upon entering, I noticed that the restaurant was bigger than I expected. There were semi-private booths, tables, and of course, a sushi bar.  Being that I was alone, I chose to sit at the sushi bar where several chefs were busy tending to the start of the lunchtime rush.

One thing you’ll notice at A-Won is that there are lots of big bowls of food going around.  These bowls were super-sized chirashi and sashimi salad.  After reading somewhere that the sashimi salad was one of A-Won’s specialties, I ordered one for myself.

A-Won (Ktown)

The waitress promptly brought out three dishes of panchan, a bowl of miso soup and a bowl of rice. The panchan consisted of an eggplant dish, a radish one, and the ubiquitous kimchi. The kimchi wasn’t anything to write home about and neither was the radish, but I really enjoyed the eggplant.  It tasted like toasted sesame oil and packed a garlicky punch.

When my sashimi salad came out, I was impressed with the size.  It looked large when other people ordered it, but placed in front of me, it was gigantic!  The bowl was filled with strips of lettuce, sprouts, seaweed, bonito, and a healthy serving of cubed tuna, salmon, and some white fish.  The waitress also brought a bottle of red, sweet gochujang with the salad, so I squirted a bunch over my bowl, mostly on the lettuce and vegetables.

A-Won (Ktown)

Although there was certainly a great quantity of fish, the quality wasn’t spectacular.  The tuna tasted alright, but the white fish was so cold that some pieces were actually icy.  The salmon was good, but there were less pieces of that than the other fish. Next time, I may just order the chirashi for a better variety of fish. Or maybe the fish egg bowl.

A-Won (Ktown)

My first foray into Korean sushi wasn’t as exciting as I had expected, but I’m not going to let that deter me. Maybe I just ordered the wrong thing. A-Won isn’t too expensive and it’s close enough to home that I can see myself venturing there again to try something different from their menu. There were enough diners in there to convince me that something there is worth returning for.


View Larger Map

A-Won Japanese Restaurant
913 1/2 S Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA‎
(213) 389-6764‎
(park in the lot or on the street)
A-Won in Los Angeles