For months, I’ve been trading restaurant tips via e-mail with Emily, Food GPS adherent and close friend of Leslie, my office-mate. Leslie, Emily, her friend Nan and I finally met for Korean comfort food at Jeon Ju, in the heart of Koreatown.
Los Angeles’ Koreatown contains the largest Korean population outside North and South Korea. Koreatown’s unofficial borders are Western Avenue on the west, Beverly Boulevard on the north, Hoover Street on the east, and Olympic Boulevard on the south. Within this relatively small, densely packed area, there are literally hundreds of Korean restaurants to choose from, ranging from 24-hour diner Hodori to Yongsusan, an upscale Korean restaurant that strictly serves tasting menus in private rooms with servers dedicated exclusively to you. Jeon Ju falls somewhere in between the two.
Jeon Ju has occupies the bottom corner of a double-decker mini-mall since 1997. Columns of Hangul text appear on white walls, alongside a pair of decorative Korean masks. The back wall is mirrored. A third wall is lined with white and brown screens. The furniture: simple red and blonde.
Our friendly server, Jennifer, brought out six cold dishes of banchan. They traditionally precede Korean meals, they change nightly, and they’re complimentary. I’ve never had better banchan. We were treated to kimchi (chile-soaked preserved cabbage), sesame marinated spinach, steamed broccoli with chile sauce, steamed egg squares, chile-marinated radish cubes, and cuts of flour, bean curd and scallion pancake, only available on Saturday. We also each received cold Napa cabbage and daikon soup, a bowl of hot seaweed soup, and a metal dish of perfect steamed white rice.
We started with Tuk Man Don ($7.41), a big bowl of murky white soup featuring rice cake discs, delicate pork filled dumplings, and scrambled egg whites. This subtle, tasty dish came topped with thin nori strips and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.
BBQ Beef Bul Ko Ki ($11.12) featured a big, sizzling plate of caramelized onions and sesame oil-soaked shredded beef, which got crusty on the metal plate. Delicious.
Eun-Dae Goo Jo Rim ($15.75) featured big cross sections of “hard broiled codfish,” scallions and daikon radish soaked in a rich red miso and chile paste. The fish featured a fatty layer of skin (which easily peeled away) and plenty of tiny bones (which didn’t). The flesh was flaky and it was certainly tender. The radish soaked up so much of the spice, it was intense, but tasty.
Mid-way through the meal, Jennifer brought an added bonus, a grilled fillet of chile-soaked [Ta Dak] root, designed to be eaten with rice, since it’s so spicy. The chewy, meaty root was sensational, crusty from the grill, with a fire kick.
Our fourth dish was Jeon Ju Dolsot ($9.26), Jeon-Ju Style Stone Pot Rice. The rice came in a sizzling stone pot embedded in a wood box and featured chestnuts, ginkgo nuts, red dates, green beans, diced carrots, peas and corn. A dish of scallion-filled soy sauce was available for spooning onto the sizzling, crusty rice. It was okay, but I’m convinced most of the ingredients came from a can.
The evening was a success. It was fun to share dinner with a group of fellow food-lovers. At least half our conversation concerned the L.A. and O.C. dining scene. Perhaps most importantly, everybody liked the food. Jeon Ju serves some truly tasty Korean comfort food.
On a subsequent visit, the retooled Korean restaurant no longer had Hangul script on the walls. They also expanded their bibimbap variety to eight. Of course they have more than two dozen other dishes, including Biji Jjigae with “bean curd dregs,” kimchi and pork; Tteok Mandu Guk, soup with rice cake and dumplings in beef broth; and Godeungeo Kimchi Jorim, mackerel with kimchi braised in seasoned soy sauce, but bibimbap still gets top billing.
Jeon Ju’s banchan remained vibrant on my return visit.
Kimchi Dolsot Bibimbap ($10.19) was “served piping hot in an earthenware pot, consisting of rice, cooked kimchi with butter and marinated short ribs with red chile paste,” aka gochujang. Mix to integrate diverse flavors, including nori strips and fried egg.
Dubu Dolsot Bibimbap ($10.19) wasn’t nearly as meaty, but still made a big impact in the sizzling pot, “consisting of rice, cooked vegetables & fried tofu with red chile paste” along with nori, punchy kimchi, crunchy bean sprouts, scallions, carrots, a fried egg and both green and yellow squash.
Next time, I’ll return for a dish I previously enjoyed: Kalbi Dolsot Bibim Bap ($8.34), a sizzling stone pot with oil at the bottom that crusted the rice. Toppings involved tender, boned short ribs chunks, little seaweed strips, mushrooms, onions, spinach, sprouts, a mystery yellow root veggie, cabbage, and one soft-boiled egg. Mixed with gochujang, it made for a terrific meal I’ve still never had better bibimbap.
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