K-Town

I work in Manhattan's Koreatown, which is really just one block of Korean businesses - 32nd St between Broadway and 5th Ave. Actually, 35th & 36th St between the sames avenues both have their share of Korean restaurants, but that block of 32nd is where the action is.

During the day it's loud and crowded with a mix of business people and tourists wandering around the Empire State Building. Korean bankers are walking around in suits. (I work on the corner in a Korean bank building, the tallest on the block.

There are lots of restaurants. A mandoo (dumpling) bar serves several kinds of dumplings. My favorite are the kimchee pork. A full-service noodle shop has just six items on the menu, all noodles. A Korean sushi shop (Korean sushi rolls usually have pickled radish in them) sells rolls and miso soup to go for $4.50.


A narrow little shop called Woorijip - kind of a fast food place - is always jam packed. They have a few seats in the front, a few in the back, but in the middle is a hot buffet that charges by the pound, a window where you can order soups and noodles, and racks of packaged ready-to-go lunches like kimchee tofu with rice, bibimbap (beef with rice), bulgogi (beef with noodles), pancakes, fried dumplings...

At the full service Korean restaurants, the lunch menus are mostly soups and rice dishes. Some of them come out in these scalding hot stone bowls so that, if it's a soup, it's BOILING. Some places give you a raw egg to crack into the soup and then stir up, which is my favorite. If it's a rice dish, the rice gets a little crispy on the bottom by the time you get to it.

Korean meals start with a bunch of little bowls of assorted appetizers. You don't order them or pay for them, they just show up. It's typically a mix of preserved foods and vegetables: sweet salty anchovies, kimchee (pickled spicy cabbage), cucumber salad, seaweed salad, bean sprouts, potatoes, fish cakes, turnips.

Dinners are usually more elaborate and best with four to six people so you can justify - and afford - ordering several dishes and sharing. There's Japchae, a noodle dish with beef, greens and red bell pepper. When it's done right, it tastes like fire... like it was cooked in a smoking hot wok. Korean pancakes are savory and usually have vegetables in the batter and sometimes seafood.

But Korean BBQ is what people get worked up about. They bring out marinated meat to the table - pork, beef tongue, short ribs - and grill it in front of you. The better places have grills in the middle of the tables so you can grill your own. You eat this wrapped in lettuce leaves with raw vegetables.

Koreatown at night is even louder and more crowded. The street is lit up by the signs of bars and restaurants. Karaoke is really popular, and the restaurants stay open late to feed the drunk people.

When I finally leave New York, this is one of the neighborhoods I'll miss most.