K-Bap
Summary
This is easily walkable from the 5th Ave flagship Apple store for some decent casual Korean food.
The banchan comes with the bulgogi bento box below. It’s basically that white pickled daikon, kimchi radish, and kimchi. Just a note that their kimchi here is super sour compared to other places I’ve been to.
The bulgogi bento box was ok. It came with japchae (Korean sweet potato noodles), bulgogi, fish cake, kimchi daikon, and what tasted similar to tempura potato of some sort. The bulgogi was a little on the greasy side and very sweet. The japchae was pretty decent. The fish cake was pretty good, and so was the daikon. I didn’t care much for the tempura. I think the bulgogi bento box was just OK, and I’d recommend to get something else instead unless you’re hungry and don’t care.
The kimchi jigae is what I usually get the first time I’m at a Korean restaurant. There are some pretty decent kimchi jigae in the city. This ranks probably middle of the pack. The kimchi jigae came with rice cake, some pork bits, and of course the same sour kimchi from the banchan. Because the kimchi is so sour, the broth was also very sour and rich (in a overly tangy and a not good way). Rich in the sense that the pepper and sourness of the broth was a little harsh for me, even when eating it with white rice. I usually can finish this, but this one in particular was difficult towards the end because of the boldness of the peppers/sour/tang.
Lastly, was the spicy chicken kimbap. We opted to not get the bulgogi kimbap because the bulgogi was in the set. Overall, I thought the kimbap was ok. Even though they are quite big, they don’t have much flavor even with the varying kimbap ingredients.
Final Verdict
If you’re looking for Korean and not near K-town, this place is definitely a good place to go to. Otherwise, I wouldn’t make any special trips out here.
Yelp Jabs
Food: the shrimp Udon was good … Tempura was fried, crispy, perhaps too much so. The Grapefruit beer is really good. Haha just do that!
Who would get shrimp udon at a Korean restaurant?