Everything Korean at Woori Market

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Woori Market maintains all the traditions of the modern American grocer. Outside, a middle-aged man sits at a solitary stall as he attempts to peddle newspaper subscriptions. Pop music is piped into the aisles. Greeters are placed at the entrance, translating “hello” into a smiling “annyong haseyo.”
The Korean [...]

Despite Long Beach’s culinary variety, Korean cooking has had little success in the way of setting up shop within the city. The recent popularity of the Kogi taco truck attests to the globalized palate of Southern Californians, but when it comes to the pickled and marinated flavors of Korean cuisine, Long Beach is largely underserved. [...]

Lakewood noodle house Myung Dong Kalguksu descends from a famous Seoul restaurant specializing in kalguksu, or “knife noodles,” a soupy noodle dish made with a broth of dried anchovies, shellfish and kelp. As its name suggests, the noodles are prepared by hand, with wheat flour sliced into thick, flat pieces à la fettuccine pasta. Chopped [...]

Soondae (Korean blood sausage) jiggles its way into half of the restaurant’s dishes. The chubby links—colored something between a bruised shade of purple and a hamburger-like brown—are even available vacuum-sealed for the home cook. At the restaurant, the sausages are served in soups, stir-fries and, of course, by themselves, plated up with as much pride [...]

Sanguine meals at Seoul Soondae

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Seoul Soondae ties together all the details you’d expect from a restaurant of its age: maroon booths buffed to a dull, diner-like sheen, regulars intimating orders with little more than a nod of the head. Seoul Soondae, after all, has been around for 20 years, helping to define [...]

Feed your Korean-Chinese curiosity with jajangmyeon, an overflowing bowl of wheat noodles topped with a black soybean paste called chunjang. The paste initially sits on top of the noodles in a sticky pile, a blackish ball nearly as dark as tar. But after you mix the dish together, its appeal isn’t so murky-—the paste is [...]

The buried treasures of Downey’s Peking Restaurant

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Peking Restaurant looks like it sprouted straight out of Downey’s past, an old space built right along with the rest of the city’s post-bean-field boom. And in those few modest midcentury blocks that make up downtown Downey, the restaurant is a fine fit, the kind of [...]

The black rice at Slowfish isn’t just a gimmick–it’s an essential component of the restaurant’s subscription to the Slow Food movement. More important, though, is the black rice’s taste, which conceals a few nutty notes that pair perfectly with the restaurant’s sushi bar. Among Slowfish’s so-called big plates, the beef ribs easily eat best. The [...]

Kalguksu is the restaurant’s staple, a dish truly meant for all seasons—one that can warm you up in the winter and also take you to the sea in the summer. That’s because kalguksu is a noodle soup scooped up from the ocean, with fat, hand-cut noodles swaying like kelp among the soup’s seafood. Swimming through [...]

Slowfish comes wrapped in black

PHOTO by RICK POON
Slowfish seems a negative space, one where all the usual sushi-house whites are underexposed into medium grays and endless blacks. The restaurant embraces this, though, as you can’t even see into the place—the windows are blacked out by a limousine-level tinting so dark that you can’t spot a [...]