Korean BBQ: Dong Il Jang

A Korean bbq festival was in town, but since we had to miss it, the boyfriend and I decided to have a little celebration of our own. We got a list of recommended Korean bbq restaurants from a friend of a Korean friend who lives in Koreatown and opted for a non-all-you-can-eat bbq restaurant: Dong Il Jang.

The restaurant boasted of many traditional Korean decorations, brown maid dressed waitresses, and wooden benches with a built-in tabletop stove. There was even a different section where you can take off your shoes and eat on the ground, I guess the traditional way.

The menu had the traditional bbq dishes including those I was familiar with--bulgogi and kalbi. The prices ranged from $20-25 per portion, however, you would have to order a minimum of 2 of the same dish (a minus in my opinion especially if its a small party). The boyfriend and I decided to go with the roast gui, a dish other yelpers recommended.

To start off, they brought out about 10 delightful and fresh appetizer dishes. I'm a big fan of kimchi (pickled spicy cabbage), and their kimchi was pretty tasty. The fishcakes were also a personal favorite.

Our main dish came out next, and it was disappointingly brought to us as a plate of frozen sliced beef. For $25/portion, I had hoped for fresh beef.

Next, our waitress turned on our skillet, slapped on some butter, placed a few slices of beef on the pan, and left us on our own to enjoy our meal. The boyfriend and I (non-Koreans) looked at each other, then down at our sauce, then at each other again. At this point, I had wished I brought my Korean friend to show us "the way" to Korean dining. We wanted to make sure we did things right.

Luckily, we figured it out (I think). We cooked the meat ourselves to our liking. The meat can be eaten with sliced green onions and dipped into the provided sauce. The flavor overall was pretty decent, but I thought the meat itself was lacking in...texture. It was pretty chewy for a meat that was thinly sliced. Perhaps I was more used to the marinated pork and beef, that without the strong flavors, what's left to criticize about the roast gui was the meat itself.

Lastly, when we were done with our meat, our waitress came by and asked us something. I had remembered my friend telling me about the kimchi fried rice at the end, so right when I heard "kimchi" from our waitress' mouth, I eagerly said "yes yes! Kimchi fried rice!!"

She smiled and came back with several ingredients to make our final dish: rice, kim chi, sliced meat, and spicy sauce. She started putting the ingredients together, and at the end, she packed the rice on the pan to let it sizzle on the bottom.

This was the best part of our meal. The mixture of slightly crunchy rice, pickled cabbage, meat, and special sauce pleased my palate. It was the flavor that I had been looking for. Overall, I thought the roast gui was okay, service was pretty good, great atmosphere, tasty kimchi dishes and the kim chi fried rice was freaking awesome. The latter had especially made my night. =)