Restaurant: 8 BBQ
Location: 863 S Western Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90005. (213) 365-1750
Date: December 24, 2018 & March 17, 2019
Cuisine: Korean Pork BBQ
Rating: Tasty Stuff
Christmas Eve (and day) are great excuses to go eat Asian food because — l it’s just tradition — and they’re open.
I was sorta hankering for SGV Chinese but Yarom wanted to keep it “local” and head to KTown.
The debate as to which place to grace with our rambunctiousness eventually settled on 8 BBQ — which was good by me because I’d never been and it was on my list.
8 BBQ, which used to have some other name, is a KBBQ place that specializes in pork belly BBQ — specifically 8 different flavored variants!
It was packed (we had to wait a bit) and was equipped with the usual Korean ventilation.
The table was preset with banchan and these interesting looking perched grills — which struct me as a burn/spill waiting to happen.
The banchan parade included spicy pickled bamboo or radish (hard to tell).
Noodle salad.
This awesome spiced cold tofu.
These pickles.
And this incredibly addictive but simple salad — Yarom and I ate two bowls of it ourselves (there was another bowl on the other side of the table and like most banchan it was “infinite refills”).
Pineapple on the grill?
Oh, and these marinated daikon are less for munching but for wrapping meat in.
We ordered combo A to start which included 8 flavors of pork belly, seafood soybean stew, banchan, salad, and mozzarella kimchi fried rice on 12/24/19. On 3/17/19 we ordered combo A and a beef combo.
And they immediately start grilling up an infinite supply of kimchee and spicy bean sprouts.
This is the seafood soybean stew, which was pretty tasty — although it’s always hard to eat those crab claws.
I think some kimchee went in here to “spice it up.”
A different kind of kimchee soup — no seafood.
Here is the 8 ways of pork belly. From left to right: wine, original, black sesame, garlic, herb, curry, miso, and red pepper paste.
They start grilling up the first 4. Look like bacon — I wonder why?
And a bit like fish when half cooked.
Then it gets cut up. The waiter does most of the grilling. Of this set, I probably liked sesame and garlic best. Wine was kinda weird.
The second set starting off.
And done. This whole set was really yummy. Loved curry, miso, and red pepper.
Then we ordered some steak’ums — I mean Prime Beef Brisket.
Grilling. They keep replacing the kimche etc.
Finished beef. Nice, but not a TON of flavor.
Prime Korean Style Boneless Rib.
On the grill. This was meatier with a good steaky flavor.
Marinated Galbi Bulgogi.
On the grill. This was my favorite beef as the marinate gave it a ton of sweet/soy flavor.
A chunk of the beef plate.
Grilling.
The whole rib eye.
Grilling
And cut. Super juicy. Delicious. We ordered 2!
Thick cut pork belly.
Grills up nice and juicy.
Starting our mozzarella kimchi fried rice by throwing some of the already grilled kimchee in the pot.
Then here is the rice, seaweed, greens.
That goes in too.
And the mozzarella on top.
I snapped a picture of it all melted and while it’s hard to see the cheese it was insanely good. I always like kimchee fried rice but the mozzarella really takes it up a bunch of notches.
I convinced people to try this Spicy Buckwheat Noodle and it was also insanely good. The slippery noodles had great texture and there was a good bit of kick and a really nice tangy/spicy vibe to the sauce.
There was some vinegar and Korean mustard in case you wanted to have even more tang and (mustardy) spice.
Here are the noodles all mixed up.
Then we ordered the secret “9th pork belly” the Bulgogi style marinate.
On the grill. This was a great pork too as it had that signature Korean sweet/soy thing going on.
And to finish a steamed egg which was soft and pleasant.
On 12/24/19 I wasn’t drinking this evening and there were only 5 of us be here were the wines:
Piggy!
Overall, I was really impressed with 8 BBQ. The menu isn’t gigantic but it has just enough variety to make a really interesting meal and the food quality and taste was really good. You wouldn’t go every week because there isn’t a ton of variance here, but I’ll certainly be back as it was really delicious. Pretty “low carb” friendly too (except for the fried rice and noodles).
Afterward we wandered out into the cool misty Christmas Eve night in sear of Boba Tea — brining us to the Kung Fu Tea House!
Amusing snacks.
And the usual assortment of bobas and slushies.
A constant stream of old kung fu movies were playing on the TV!
Weird shrimp and squid chips.
And our quintet of teas. I got a passionfruit slush (40% sugar) with a bunch of bobas and jellies. They have a lot of jelly options here. Awesome night!