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K-Town Report – Lee’s Noodles

Nov11

Restaurant: Lee’s Noodles

Location: 401 S Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90020. (213) 351-9963

Date: November 2, 2016

Cuisine: Chinese Korean

Rating: Tasty little spot

Ah, Los Angeles is home to so many tasty Asian restaurants.

Lee’s Noodles is located in the heart of Korea Town, and while it says “Chinese Restaurant” on the sign, it’s really more Korean/Chinese or Chinese/Korean. Does this make it Yanbian? (the prefecture in China between North Korea and China). I’m not sure. Or maybe it’s just the kind of food made by Chinese in Korea. Either way, let’s move on to the food.

The inside is recent, but not exactly elaborately decorated.

The menu.

And like any Korean place it comes with banchan.

Cabbage with Russian dressing. Communist influence? Just kidding.

Some fairly lame kimchee and much better yellow pickled daikon radish.

Signature Dok Dok chicken. Drumsticks with “spicy glaze.” The glaze turned out to pretty much mean honey dipped fried chicken. Absolutely delicious. Very sticky too. Hot and fresh.

Steamed dumplings with meat and kimchee. Nice light steamed potstickers. Delicate flavor.

Spicy Seafood Soup Noodles. A giant bowl of seafood and noodles drowned in the Korean “red sauce” (aka siracha-like sauce). We got it mild and it still had a bit of kick.
Pan-fried glass noodles w/ pork over rice. This turned out, along with the chicken, to be a standout. Nice woody flavor from the mushroom. A little bit sweet. Delicious.

Overall this was a super reasonable ($40 total) and extremely tasty little meal. I’ll certainly pop by again on one of my many K-Town lunches.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (9)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Chinese cuisine, fried chicken, Korea-town, Korean cuisine, Lee's Noodles, Yanbian

Quick Eats – Da Jeong

Mar21

Restaurant: Da Jeong

Location: 3909 1/2 W Olympic Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90019. (323) 931-8900

Date: March 14, 2016

Cuisine: Korean

Rating: Great homestyle Korean

Los Angeles is blessed with a huge Korea Town and an extensive library of Korean food.

Da Jeong is a home style place that’s famous (at least among my friends) for its Korean fried chicken. But somehow I’d never tried it.

Pretty much beer friendly food.

Like any good Korean place, Da Jeong comes with an array of banchan (small usually pickled dishes). This one was a spiced pickled cucumber.

Kimchee, the classic.

Greens and onions.

Bean sprouts.

Chewy radish and peppers, vaguely chewy and quite tasty.

Little “candied” fish. Sweet, spicy, and briney.

Seafood pancake. This omelet/pancake is served with a soy sauce-like sauce. It was full of green onions and all sorts of seafood goodness. Really quite excellent.

Soy sauce shrimp. Raw or marinated prawns soaked in soy sauce. You twist off the head and chomp. As we noted, this was an “advanced” dish. Not so hardcore as the raw crab, but hardcore enough.

Fried chicken. Had to get this of course. Very crispy, with a strong Asian salt and pepper in the batter. We found it a touch mysterious which part of the chicken we were getting under all that fry, and the cuts are different than classic American breast and thigh. I’m guessing it was mostly dark meat. It was pretty darn awesome though.

Hearty Korean Spicy Beef Stew. That standard red Korean sauce with beef and cabbage and green onions and other stuff. Certainly a hearty hot stew.
Purple rice (rice with a bit of red bean).

I have to come back here with the Hedonists and a bigger gang and/or someone Korean. Food was very good and I could tell the ingredients were super fresh and the execution excellent. I don’t really know enough yet about Korean food to know how to order well, and with just the two of us we only got to try a few things — plus with portion sizes as they were we had WAY too much food.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Da Jeong, fried chicken, Korea-town, Korean cuisine

Far Eastern Ramen

Sep18

Restaurant: Silver Lake Ramen

Location: 2927 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026. (323) 660-8100

Date: July 31, 2015 & September 13, 2016

Cuisine: Japanese Ramen

Rating: As good a Tonkotsu ramen as I’ve had

My friend Sebastian really wanted me to try Silver Lake Ramen, which is a well liked member of the new cadre of Tonkotsu (Hakata) places in LA.

The storefront is REALLY not much.

On busy Sunset Blvd, not far from Thai Town.

The menu consists of a few ramen, the toppings, and some nice greasy appetizers.

What would ramen be without Japanese beer? It is, after all, a drinking food.

Yuzuaide. A delicious slushy of yuzu juice (lots of) sugar and mint.

Sunomono. Cucumber crab salad. This one was fine, but not nearly marinated enough for my taste. I like the sweet tangy typical Sunomono marinade.

Fried chicken. Hot and delicious.

And they really mean fried.

Spicy tuna toast. I never saw THIS in Japan. Tasty enough, but so California.

Gyoza. Some of the best fried gyoza I’ve had in LA.

Vegetarian ramen. Extra veggies. I would never order this, it’s against my creed, and it looks more like a salad than a ramen. But it floats some people’s boat. The broth was good for vegetarian, very miso.

Tonkotsu ramen. Now this is the real deal. A big slab of pork belly, soft, although not quite as good as Tsujita’s. I added bamboo shoots and left out the bean sprouts. The noodles were nice and the broth was fabulously smooth. I cut the grease with a hefty dose of vinegary gyoza-sauce (I like it that way) and stirred in the chili paste. Really a delectable broth.

Shoyu ramen. Chicken broth with special soy sauce and green onion, bamboo shoots, spinach, dried seaweed.

Tsukemen dipping noodle. Thick pork and fish broth with green onion, spinach, bean sprouts, seaweed, egg and pork belly. Now Tsujita is the benchmark Tsukemen. This was good, but a bit different. It was rich, but not quite as rich, with a stronger seafood flavor that was quite nice. The noodles weren’t quite as eggy/good. The pork more pork belly/bacon. Still a very good ramen.
Silver Lake Ramen was as good a Tonkotsu as I’ve had in LA, and all the apps were really tasty. But it’s far far east for me and there are lots of great Westside ramens like Tsujita, Tatsu, Jinya. So if you live or travel out east, by all means get your noodles on.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (3)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: fried chicken, Japanese cuisine, noodles, ramen, Silver Lake Ramen, Tonkotsu

Eastern Promises – Holly’s

Jul08

Restaurant: Holly’s

Location: 108 Jackson Creek Rd Grasonville, MD 21638. (410) 827-8711

Date: May 23, 2014

Cuisine: American

Rating: Solid modern Gastro-comfort

My family has been stopping at Holly’s (a greasy spoon a few minutes east of the Bay Bridge) for almost 40 years.

This establishment is old school Americana at its best. Nothing has really changed here since the 70s, and probably for 20 or so years before that.

Classic decor. As a kid they even had one of those “Have a Coke and have a smile” machines that was a top opening cooler! Served bottles of course.

The menu is pretty classic too.

But it does have Eastern Shore specialities like Crab and Vegetable soup. This Eastern Shore variant on Manhattan Clam Chowder (blue crab instead of clams) is delicious, sweeter, and altogether amazing.

Tuna sandwich.

Catfish sandwich. They don’t skimp on the portions.

Pancakes.

And one of their specialties, straight up friend chicken. No chocolate. No waffles. No tempura batter. Just homemade American fried chicken. And it’s still great.

Another regional specialty, the crab cake sandwich. Filled with blue crab!

It’s nice that some things, especially simple good things, don’t change. As much as I’m a food modernist, I can also really appreciate well cooked classics, sort of the culinary version of folk music.

Oh, and they have crazy good pies too, including the famous apple “dumpling.” Plus, the prices are crazy cheap. Adding a fried chicken breast to anything costs $2.59!

For more Washington dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: crab, Crabcake, Eastern Shore of Maryland, fried chicken, Holly's, Maryland

Cholesterol Check

Feb21

Restaurant: Plan Check Kitchen

Location: 1800 Sawtelle Blvd. Los Angeles, Ca 90025. 310-288-6500

Date: Febuary 11, 2014

Cuisine: Gastropub

Rating: the crullers and chicken were worth the heart attack

Hidden between the Korean BBQ and Japanese noodle joints on Sawtelle the relatively new gastropub style American eatery, Plan Check Kitchen.

The lunch menu.

Chorizo sausage, green garlic. I don’t really see the garlic, but this is fine fresh chorizo (if said dish can ever be called fresh).

Cucumber, kombu, dill. Nice crunchy modern pickles.

Stuffed mushroom. Roasted portobello, swiss cheese fondue, crispy kale, roasted garlic steak sauce. It was all about the sauce for this baby. And the sauce was same good.

Smokey fried chicken. Jidori chicken, smoked milk gravy, yam preserves, spicy pickled okra. This was some damn good fried chicken. There were no bones, just really moist chicken bits and crunch fry. The gravy was, well gravy, and the yam preserves (looked and tasted not far off from apricot jam) really made the whole sizzling chicken fat thing work. Up there with the Ad Hoc Chicken for recent fried chicken greats.

Cruller donuts. Cooked to order with cream and fruit. Wow. Just pure sugar, cinnamon, and fried goodness. Very soft and under cooked. LOTS of sugar.