Cho Dang Gol
Summary
We were visiting the Morgan Library on a late Sunday afternoon, and this restaurant was close by and on my list. I’ve always been into old school Korean places where the food was centered around non BBQ items such as bossam and kimchi jigae.
The egg soup was served as part of the meal. It’s simply tasted of steamed egg with some scallions on top. Pretty straight forward and pretty good.
The banchan is basically a bunch of little side dishes. This also came with the meal. From top left and going clockwise: tofu, pumpkin, dried anchovies, bok choy, kimchi, and some type of crunchy noodle thing. All of them were pretty good, so I have no complaints. The kimchi here though is much more fermented than other places, so be warned.
The kimchi jigae is always something I want to get a Korean restaurant I haven’t been to. It’s my metric for gauging how good the restaurant is. Suffice to say, it’s pretty good albeit a little on the fermented side. You can tell the fermentation is pretty strong when it’s super pickly and sour. I could not finish it due to how much acidity it had, but it’s probably one of the better ones in the vicinity.
The mini bossam is basically steamed pork belly with some kimchi on the side. In some Korean restaurants, they give you lettuce and some bean paste to wrap the belly in. I thought this one was slightly on the dry side, and it wasn’t as good as other places in the city.
The fried chicken was pretty good and sizeable for a small portion. The chicken was crispy and moist. It tasted very close to Japanese karaage.
Like many Korean restaurants, they serve rice out of those stone pots. The rice gets crispy after letting it sit there. They also pour I think rice water into it, so you can finish off your meal with something that has the same effect as tea.
Service was pretty fast, and there was nothing super alarmed about. The restaurant was pretty full in the early dinner hours on a Sunday.
Final Verdict
For a no thrills but fairly good authentic Korean spot in Midtown, you can’t go wrong here.
Yelp Jabs
Honestly…didn’t think it was that great and there wasn’t any sauce to go with it. So just tasted a bit bland, and since it was curds I didn’t think the texture was that great either.
Since when did Korean banchan give sauce to go with curds?
A problem I had with eating the bibimbap was that it was steaming hot and was practically burning my tongue the whole time I was eating it.
Considering it comes out in a very hot pot, I don’t know what else to think here. I suppose if you’re at fault for your own problems, then you should subtract stars from reviews.