Here’s the deal: eight months ago I started a new feature of the blog, What’s For Lunch Wednesday, wherein I and my coworker, Joel, would eat out and then joke about it. It was an extremely popular weekly segment, and it lasted a grand total of three weeks before I got laid off and Joel quit to take a job in a different city. Fortunately for everyone (except Joel), I once again have a job that’s less than a mile from him. So, What’s For Lunch Wednesday is once again on like Donkey Kong (as it were).

The rules, as you’ll no doubt recall, are these: The restaurant has to be a place neither of us has ever been, and it can’t be a chain. My comments are below, in black. Joel’s are indented, in blue.

Joel’s recommendation for today was Gloria’s Little Italy, around the corner from his office, but we got there too early. They open at noon. Mussolini can make the trains run on time, but Gloria can’t open for lunch at 11:45? So, we crossed the street and tried a Korean place. Well, a Corean place: Spicy Corea. (Joel lived in Korea for a few years, and it’s always “Korea this” and “Korea that”.)

Why they spell Korea with a C is a mystery. But Asia is supposed to be all mysterious, right? So we went in and got a table, with my lovely menu that had typesetting problems:

Spic
y
Core
a

Bulgogi

We knew we were in for a treat, as long as our food didn’t appear underneath our plates. I decided to have the bulgogi (“fire meat”) lunch special. Bulgogi is a very popular Korean dish, consisting of thinly sliced beef in a sweet sauce that most chefs won’t give you the ingredients for. (I heard once that the secret ingredient is pear juice; shortly afterward, the informant was found dead. Or drunk or something. I forget which.)

And I had the other lunch special—the one that wasn’t bulgogi.

And then Joel spent a thousand years on the phone with his wife, trying to solve the following problem: There were bees in the bathroom, but the other bathroom was locked from the inside. Ideas were bandied about, and relatives were called, and ultimately nothing was solved and we went back to our meal.

In my defense, most of the bees appeared to be dying and thus presented no real threat. Also, I really liked the food and wanted to eat it rather than driving 40 miles to jimmy open a door. So I suppose that’s the best recommendation I could give for the restaurant: “It’s so good that in order to get it you’ll abandon your loved ones to the mercy of deadly, deadly bees.” And in the end, isn’t that what every restaurant owner dreams of?

While he was on the phone I was looking at the menu and the daily specials, and they boasted a great recipe for Korean-style dried croaker. I mean, we’ve all had regular old American-style dried croaker, but Korean-style? Oh baby.

The other one

Also while he was on the phone, our potstickers came and I ate one. Two issues: First, it was hotter than the center of the sun. Second, Korean chopsticks are made of metal and completely smooth and absolutely useless. I consider myself fairly well-versed in chopstickery, but these were slippery and awkward, and I gave up to use the spoon.

Rob didn’t notice, but I asked them to grease his chopsticks. It’s an old trick played by Koreans on unsuspecting Americans.

When our food was brought out to us, I was surprised that we were served by a white college kid. Then again, everybody knows that post-adolescent caucasians make the best authentic Korean food. It’s one of those unwritten rules they never mention on cooking shows.

As you can see in the picture, the rice was kind of purplish grey. Joel said that this is normal (but he’s been known to lie before).

Overall, however, the food was really good. Astute readers will recall that the final episode of What’s For Lunch Wednesday was also Korean food, and I didn’t really love it. But this stuff was much better. Also, I really really want to like kimchi, and I think that I would if it wasn’t served cold. The flavor is strong, but not bad, but it’s gross cold. It makes me sad.

Rob doesn’t know this, but the majority of Korean history has been depressing, and their food is intended to evoke that sadness. That’s why they eat dog; it’s sort of a “We will never forget” kind of thing.

That being said, you can’t go wrong with Korean barbecue. They have some great meat dishes, so long as you make sure there’s no collar in your food. I jest, of course; beef is far less expensive than dog meat.

So… we ate it and it was delicious. And when they brought us the check, instead of bringing mints or fortune cookies they brought a small pack of M&Ms, and an individually-wrapped Twizzlers. Just like in the old country.

If you recall, I rate my restaurants in multiples of Applebee’s quality. I gave the last Korean place 3.75 ApB (or, it’s 3.75 times better than Applebee’s). In retrospect, that was probably too high. But, what’s done is done. I hereby give Spicy Corea 4 ApB.

And my preferred metric is the belt loop, as in how many extra notches I would need if I were to eat my fill. And I’m pleased to rate Spicy Corea 84 belt loops (I had to dock it a point because of that spelling).

In our last What’s For Lunch? Wednesday, we visited the Navajo Hogan in a throwback to my time as a missionary in New Mexico. This week, we decided to try the cuisine of Joel’s mission: Korean.  The place we chose was E Jo. I don’t know what that means in Korean, and neither does Joel, which makes me wonder if he really knows the language at all.

Actually, it means “Rob is a jerk.” Don’t be jealous that you didn’t get to go to “the land of a thousand smells.” Now, in selecting Korean food, it’s important to strike a balance between “authentic” and “good.” While some of their food makes you jump for joy, other dishes simply make you jump for the nearest exit. So, since neither of us had been to E Jo before, we knew we were in for an adventure.

A very clean spoon.

The restaurant was clean and well-kept, but very cold. And the table was some kind of polished stone, which made things feel even colder. We were brought salad (with really terrible ranch dressing) and miso (which is my favorite kind of soup). And, as you can see in the accompanying photo, our spoons came wrapped hygienically in paper. Think about it: cold, clean, sterile—I think “E Jo” means “hospital”.

After explaining to Rob that those wooden things are chopsticks, rather than complimentary ear cleaners, we perused the menu. They had a number of dishes I enjoy, but in the end I decided to go for the bulgogi, or “fire meat,” which is one of the better known Korean dishes. If you ever find yourself in a Korean restaurant with no idea what to order, go for one of the meat dishes (not counting octopus, which is just kind of chewy and tasteless).

Bulgogi

I think that Bulgogi sounds like it ought to be Eastern European, not Korean. And the same goes for my dish: Dolsot Bibimbap. Mine was essentially a fried rice type of dish, served in a sizzling stone bowl. It comes with a raw egg on top, and you mix it all up and it cooks in the bowl. It was accompanied by three sides: some kind of weird seed pod thing that we couldn’t identify, some kind of potato, and the infamous kimchi. I’d never tried kimchi before, but I hadn’t heard raving reviews. It’s fermented spicy cabbage, served cold. Mmm…

I did look up the root thing, and I would like to state for the record that I was right—it is lotus. So there’s a little something exotic for you, although I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t get boiled quail eggs. I can eat those things like popcorn. Anyway, my meal was delicious. And it was presented on an attractive and not-at-all-authentic tray. The woman who served us was courteous and deferential, her only failing being unable to translate “yun-gn” to “lotus” (we heard other patrons asking the same thing about the side dish). In the end, the only irritation was Rob’s complaint that his food didn’t have enough flavor. Next time I’ll convince him to order something so spicy that his eyes will melt out of their sockets.

Dolsot Bibimbap

My rice dish indeed was bland bland bland. I added the red spicy sauce to it, but that only added heat without any kind of flavor at all. I was getting ready to give E Jo a very mediocre rating until I did the unthinkable: I mixed all the kimchi into my dish. The sizzling stone bowl heated it up, and the overpowering flavor of the kimchi balanced perfectly with the tastelessness of my food, and I had a rather excellent meal. So, kimchi make a come-from-behind win!

My final rating is going to be a 3.5ApB.  It was tasty, but not fantastic. Had I rated this immediately upon leaving the restaurant, I’d probably have ranked it a little higher—maybe a 3.75ApB—but the kimchi flavor lingered in my mouth for HOURS AND HOURS afterward, and it kind of soured me on the experience.

Having made the return trip in a small car with Rob, I can testify that the kimchi did indeed linger ( I refrained from partaking, having had enough kimchi over the course of two years to last me a lifetime). As for my rating, it’s a solid 75 belt loops. It’s just Americanized enough to be unintimidating for the average novice, but it had a pretty extensive menu. I’ll be going back to sample some of the other Korean dishes I miss.