Cham Sut Gol [Garden Grove]

My friend made reservations for a table of approximately 10 and we all got the dinner special of all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ at $16.99 per person. It came with short and thin skinless pork belly, thin sliced beef brisket, pork BBQ, beef BBQ, chicken BBQ, egg pot, bean paste stew and thin rice cake wrap. There are more choices on the menu but we didn't heed the other pages.

Our table was immediately covered with an assortment of tapas from potato salad, to radishes, to chap chae, to broccoli. Then the waitress brought out a mountain of meat and just dumped it all on the steaming grill. She left us to cook it but would return occasionally to add more stuff. The egg pot was very much like that of chawanmushi except it wasn't as light and there were less "surprises" (I've always thought of chawanmushi as a treasure hunt where you find a shrimp here, and a vegetable there). The other dishes weren't unique.

All the meat just started to meld together and eventually they just all started tasting the same after I subjected them to this sweet soy sauce mixture. I had wanted more chap chae but it was reported that there was no more and the message was delivered with another helping of meat.

At the end of the the meal, you can help yourself to the self-serve ice cream cart, where you'll find big tubs of bubble gum, butter pecan and chocolate ice cream. It station itself doesn't look so sanitary, especially the bowl of water where the scoops are left. And the cone is the absolute worst ice cream cone I've ever had in my life; it tasted like cardboard.

Cham Sut Gol
9252 Garden Grove Blvd.
Garden Grove, CA 92842
(714) 590-9292

A-Won [Koreatown LA]

After unsuccessfully trying to find a consensus about where to eat before our Brand Upon the Brain screening at the Egyptian , I remembered that I had read a review in the LA Weekly about A-Won, a Korean sushi joint. We decided that that sounded interesting enough and after learning about the infamous hwe dup bap rice bowl.

We consulted the menu and tried to decipher the English translations for our dish. Being that none of us were Korean, we didnt want to butcher the pronunciation of hwe dup bap in asking the waitress for clarification so we blindly stared at her when she came to take our order. We eventually ended up asking and learned that what we were looking for was actually the "Assortment of Raw Fish and Vegetables over rice" for $14.95. But before they brought out the star attraction, we each received a bowl of rice and another of miso soup to hold us over. I was looking forward to the panchan side dishes, but was disappointed when I saw the waitress come over with a measly three dishes to accompany our dinner. They were average at best and just your standard kimchee, seaweed, and pickled vegetable.

We hadn't even gotten a chance to finish slurping up our miso soups [which didn't have tofu in them btw] when we were accosted by the sight of our entrees coming out of the kitchen. Hwe dup bap is a massive bowl of lettuce and sashimi poke reminiscent of its meat-heavy counterpart, bi bim bap. I warned my tablemates about the portion sizes, but they choose to not heed my advice and to instead order three bowls of the fish-laden extravanganza.

Our initial reaction was to gape, awe, and marvel at the sheer size of the bowls (12" in diameter). We then pondered the magnitude of our decisions. Would we be able to finish all that food? At least we would have to finish all of the sashimi. But try as we might, we could not delay the inevitable task that lay ahead of us, so we dove in.

After probing we our chopsticks, we learned that the bowl was much wider in girth than it was in depth and deduced that it was mostly lettuce. We regretted mixing in our rice because it got overwhelmed by the lettuce and ended up having to order a second bowl to even out the ratio.

Actually, I can't take credit for the hwe dup bap because I was more in the mood for meat and ordered Tonkasu ($12.95). It was a little on the greasy side, though I did enjoy the slightly tart, Korean-style tonkasu sauce. I spent the rest of night regretting my decision, which ended up giving me some serious heartburn.

In the end, my tablemates probably ate a combined effort of 2.5 bowls, though they remarked that they could have eaten more, but they had just gotten bored with the dish. No one felt adventurous enough that night, but we heard that A-Won also makes a mean al bap, which is a similar everything-but-the-kitchen-sink rice bowl, but with various types of eggs and roe instead.

A-Won
913 S Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(213) 389-6764