Sunday - June 17, 2012

New To Me, Part 2

Something new for lunch for me. I had no idea what I was getting, nor getting into. I just pointed at the menu and said “bring me this”. And it was awesome.

We decided to give ourselves a little break on the way down to spend another day tending to my ailing mother in law. Let’s have lunch out. There is a new tapas grill right on the main drag, let’s give it a try. Oh no, it’s Father’s Day, the place is a zoo, and the only they’re serving is the buffet until 4pm. At $25 a person, this was more food and more cash then we wanted. So now what? Down the street to our favorite old Thai place? Meh, I dunno. Don’t really feel like having that today. Hey, there’s the Japanese/Korean place on the corner, we could get sushi! Ok, but that’s not really ringing my bell either.

So we go to the place, a little joint called Kimchi Hana, and I felt daring and ordered something Korean. Gob Dol Bab. Hot and spicy it said. I asked our waiter what it was, and he tells me it’s dolsot bibimbap with gochujang sauce on the side. Oh, gee thanks, that helps. No seriously, what is it? Hot pot with rice and vegetables, with some beef and egg. Ok, I’ll try it.

We like this place because a) the food is good, b) it’s authentic enough that we’re usually the only Caucasians in the place, and c) they totally spoil you by bringing about a dozen little plates of appetizers to the table while your food cooks. Bean sprouts in sauce, kimchi, seaweed salad, a bowl of miso soup, potatoes in sesame oil, daikon with spicy sauce, and so on. Fun. So we nibble on that for a couple minutes, and then my food arrives.

It isn’t often that you can hear your meal arriving before it gets to the table. The waiter put a gigantic stone bowl in front of me, it must have been 10” across and 6” deep. And it was hotter than hell. The food inside was cooking. Sizzling. Practically jumping up and down in the bowl, letting off clouds of steam. Oh sure, you’ve done the fajita thing that comes on a hot iron platter. Forget it. Ten times more sizzle. It roared. This was a massive chunk of fresh lava with food inside. Dangerous meals; I love it. The bowl had to weigh 8 pounds. And it was filled with prepared vegetables, and on top of all of it, in the middle, was a raw egg. Frying itself. While sitting on top of the vegetables. Wild. That’s how much heat was in the bowl.

And it was fantastic. I was a bit skeptical, because I’ve tried Korean food before, and I guess I picked the wrong dishes ... the best one up until today tasted like a plate full of burned dirt. Now I stand corrected.

You can read all about dolsot bibimbap here. Mine was fancier; it had 12 different kinds of veggie thingies in it. I gather I was supposed to lay on the hot sauce and mix it all together? I didn’t. I ate a little of this one, a little of that one, dip a chopstick full in the hot sauce, share a taste of this and that ... and by the time I got down to the bottom - about half an hour later, and I’m a big eater - not only was I quite full, but the stone bowl had finally cooled off enough so that I could touch it, and the rice at the bottom ... how can I explain this ... the darned meal comes with incentive: finish all your vegetables and you can have the desert at the bottom. The rice had been flavored with something a bit sweet, and had fried itself into crispy golden slabs while I ate my way down to it. What a fantastic idea.

Ok, it was a little shy on meat. They could have stuck a few bits of spicy pork barbecue around the sides, or maybe some of those pre-chewed stewed beef roll-up things they do. But between the dozen dishes of appetizers and the red hot salad bowl of different veggies, I was plenty full enough. And gochujang sauce? It’s a little hot. It’s rather thick, nearly gritty. I think it would make a great barbecue sauce for grilling ribs. But from a Thai food junkie’s perspective it wasn’t hot at all. Why, it hardly made my head sweat. Much. And it didn’t sting my mouth at all.

A tiny bit of net research shows me that the art and science of cooking in super hot stone bowls is right up there with maturing the seasoning on your cast iron skillet so that it makes perfect cornbread. Neat. I will be having this dish again, but I might wait until the heat fails on a cold winter day. A couple bowls of this around the table will warm up the whole room for half the night.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/17/2012 at 09:21 PM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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