If you’re looking for delicious Korean barbeque in New York City then you’ll definitely want to check out Woo Chon, located in Midtown at 8 West 36th Street. We had quite a crew that night, and Woo Chon was a great place for family-style dining. We ordered a ton of food, and left stuffed and satisfied.
First the servers brought out an array of Korean vegetable dishes. These included kim chi, bean sprouts, egg plant, radish, and dried seaweed. Just look at that spread—there was something for everyone.
And then the appetizers started filling up the table. First up was the Seafood Pajun—an incredible scallion pancake with mussels, squid, oysters, and mushrooms. It arrived at the table nice and crispy on the outside, fluffy and light on the inside, and simply exploding with seafood.
Next came the Mandoo Gui. These dumplings stuffed with beef, pork, tofu, and vegetables and fried until crispy were excellent, like little pockets of perfection that were great for sharing.
The server also brought over some Haemul Sun Tofu soup on the house. This spicy soup was prepared with seafood and soft tofu. There was lots of different types of seafood in the soup, and I was happy to discover some tasty tentacles.
I insisted on ordering grilled baby back ribs, which were flame broiled with a spicy marinade. These ribs were out of this world with their spicy and sweet sauce. One of the reasons I love ribs is tearing the meat off the bone—it makes me feel primitive (in a good way).
The Korean-style barbeque was one of the main reasons we decided to hit up Woo Chon. At each table there is a burner. The server turns it on and allows a metal grill plate to heat up. After it’s hot enough the meat is placed on the grill and allowed to cook through. We ordered Galbi (prime rib filleted off the bone) and Saewoo Gui (filleted shrimps). Both were served in the Woo Chon marinade and tasted awesome.
When the meat was ready we wrapped the pieces up in lettuce and a dollop of spicy sauce (next time I'll definitely be saving those assorted vegetables to wrap up the barbequed meat!).
We also ordered two types of Bibimbap. Bibimbap is a very popular Korean dish—it is often a mixture rice, vegetables, and meat served sizzling in a hot stone bowl. The ingredients are then mixed together in the bowl at the table. I don’t remember exactly what was in each of the bibimbaps that we ordered, but they were delicious. Bibimbap is great to eat, but it's also a lot of fun to say.
For drinks to accompany our meal I ordered some cold house sake while everyone else opted for the Korean OB beer.
Woo Chon was a great place to devour tasty Korean barbecue. There’s so much to choose from that you simply can’t go wrong. I recommend going with a large group so you can try lots of these delicious dishes!
As a thank you to Son and Pat for always taking me out for fabulous dinners and never letting me pay, I cooked them up a Chinese feast last week. I decided to prepare some of my favorites: dumplings, spicy green beans, fish-flavored eggplant, and pork belly.
First up were the dumplings. I do more a Tibetan-style beef momo than the crescent shaped Chinese pork dumpling. The filling is a mixture of ground beef, minced garlic, minced ginger, and chopped scallions. To form the dumpling take a small amount and place it in the center of a dumpling wrapper (I usually get them from the store but they can be made from just flour and water). Then rub the edges of the wrapper with some water and fold the sides up over the meat filling and pinch together to form a little packet. Next place the dumplings in a steamer basket over boiling water. They only need to cook for a few minutes. I usually just grab one from the basket when they look done and cut it open to see if it's cooked all the way through.
These dumplings are serious.
The dipping sauce for the dumplings is easy. Just mix together soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil with some garlic, ginger, and scallions.
Fish-flavored eggplant and spicy green beans were two of my favorite dishes when I lived in Chengdu. I served up these classic dishes with some white rice.
Fish-flavored eggplant got its name because the same seasonings used to cook fish were used to cook the eggplant. So it's not that the eggplant actually tastes like fish--just that it was prepared similarly. The version I made had eggplant, ground pork, Sichuan numbing pepper, dried red chili, garlic, ginger, scallions, soy sauce, MSG, chili bean paste, sugar, and rice wine vinegar. Delicious.
For the spicy green beans I went a little bit heavier on the numbing pepper and dried red chili peppers.
So what exactly is numbing pepper? These little peppers abound in many Sichuan dishes, offering an interesting cooling and numbing aspect to the otherwise intense chili heat of the food. It is called huājiāo, which literally translates to flower pepper—an apt name as the outer husks of the shells used in cooking resemble opened flower petals. The flavor of the numbing pepper adds the quality of mala to any dish—that of numbing spiciness. When eating a Sichuan dish, the first moment is usually marked by the heat of the chili. But when it subsides the numbing pepper takes over. The fires in the mouth are cooled by the strange sensation of the numbing pepper, and truly, the tongue will go numb.This spicy green bean dish was always one of my favorites for riding the hot and numbing wave of Sichuan food.
For the final dish we had braised pork belly. Sonya and Pat had missed out on the pork belly I made for one of our holiday dinners, so I used the same recipe and cooked up the rest of the food while the pork belly simmered away on the stove for a couple of hours.
Since I needed sake to cook the pork belly we also sipped on sake throughout the meal. We had a large bottle of classic, cheap Gekkeikan sake, as well as a bottle of unfiltered, cloudy sake that Sonya likes. The rice wine was definitely a great accompaniment to our delicious Chinese feast.
There's nothing like a home-cooked meal to say thanks. It was my honor to cook dinner for two of my favorite people as they prepare to bid adieu to the island of Manhattan. And the best part? Watching a new episode of Jersey Shore as we devoured our meal. Classic.
The Wolfpack (aka the Rook sisters and Pat) were on a mission for Japanese tapas, so the only action to take was to head to Village Yokocho is the East Village. This Japanese joint has a seriously extensive menu--pages and pages long--that is filled with all sorts of delicious dishes.
Of course we started off the meal with some sake. We went with a chilled bottle of Momokawa Organic Gingo Sake, which is described as being “fruit forward and lush with a delicate rice aroma and a clean finish.” I obviously like anything lush, and Momokawa is one of my favorite brands of sake--the flavors were nice, crisp, and clean.
We also ordered some cabbage kim chi and cucumber kim chi. I'm not the biggest kim chi fan, but I thought the classic cabbage one was done pretty well. I preferred the cucumber kim chi, which still had a nice spice to it but wasn't overloaded with vinegar. The crispness of the cucumber was also very refreshing.
Next up was baked batter octopus balls with bonito flakes and dried seaweed. I have been waiting to try octopus balls ever since I saw Anthony Bourdain indulge in them on his Japanese episode of No Reservations. They were awesome. When they arrived the bonito flakes were dancing around like little gauzy flags on a windy day, enticing us to pop those tasty little balls in our mouth.
Chicken skin yakitoro is a must at Village Yokocho. The skin is one of the best parts of the chicken, so who wouldn't love lots of pieces of chicken skin on a stick? Seriously. It's crispy, fatty, and just plain delicious. We also ordered chicken with scallions yakitoro--the tender pieces of chicken and charred scallions were a nice contrast to the decadent chicken skin.
In an effort to be experimental we decided to try the lightly grilled sting ray fin and dried squid. I preferred the sting ray fin (seen in the center of the photo below), which was a little crispy and chewy with light sea flavors. The dried squid was interesting, but super salty and fishy. The texture of the squid was very chewy, and it struck me as being like beef jerky of the sea.
More squid was on the way--this time it was deep-fried squid legs. Essentially, it was a lightly battered and fried calamari, but all we got was the tentacles. Score. The tentacles are my favorite part of the squid, so I was pretty happy about that. Just look at those delicately spiraling tentacles--beautiful.
For our second round of yakitori we opted for quail egg, chicken tail (aka chicken ass), and beef tongue. The quail eggs appeared to have been hard cooked and then placed on the skewers and lightly grilled. The ratio of yolk to egg white was perfect as we popped these little quail eggs like candy.
Now for the chicken tail--this shit is serious. It's also called chicken ass, the pope's nose, and the pygostyle. Essentially it's the place on the chicken where the tail feathers attach. It's fatty, crispy, and just a beautiful piece of, well, ass.
Another adventurous order was the beef tongue. Pat was pretty wary of the tongue, but I could tell he enjoyed it. After my recent first experience with beef tongue I knew it would be delicious--it was gone in seconds.
The broiled miso flavored cod fish was awesome. The fish was light and flaky and coated with a nice glaze of miso. It was also accompanied with some tasty black seaweed.
When I spotted the grilled thick-cut Berkshire pork with Yuzu pepper flavor I knew we had to order it. The pork was nice and tender and just melted in the mouth. I loved the Yuzu pepper as well. Yuzu is a citrus fruit from Asia, and as an accompaniment to the pork it offered a refreshing, peppery burst of flavor.
We also decided to order another round of kim chi, this time opting for radish. It arrived with nice, big chunks of radish coated in the spicy seasoning.
To finish off the meal we ordered every type of dumpling on the menu. First up was the steamed pork dumplings with wasabi flavored wrappers. Next came the steamed crab, shrimp, and vegetables dumplings, followed by deep fried spinach and vegetables dumplings. And our final bites of the meal were pan fried shrimp and vegetables dumplings. All the dumplings were great, but my favorite was the steamed pork dumplings with wasabi.
Village Yokocho was a seriously phenomenal meal. We left satisfied, satiated, and spinning from lots of sake. It's a great place to hit up with friends so you can try out a variety of dishes. You definitely don't want to miss out on this awesome East Village joint.
