Baroo: Did This "Free-Style Experimental Kitchen" Just Usher in the Latest Hot Neighborhood?

pork belly taco

If you are driving east on Santa Monica Blvd. and you overshoot the mini-mall that is home to Baroo, "a free-style experimental kitchen" of Korean-influenced fermented foods, you will probably find parking just a little ways past Wilton Place. You will traverse a short stretch of sidewalk that's home to at least three businesses catering to Oaxacans, a dubious nightspot known as Gold Diggers, the doorway to the Harvey Apartments. 

the kombucha fermenting area

The mini-mall is deserted at night except for the blank white lighted sign in front of Baroo. For some reason I thought I had already read an article deeming Baroo "the most hipster restaurant ever," but maybe I imagined it. It was probably this Eater article instead, What's Up With This Bizarre Fermentation Restaurant in a Hollywood Strip Mall?

Inside the small cafe is a communal table, shelves stocked with fermenting potions in various stages and a counter piled high with notable cookbooks, a nod to tradition and technique also seen at places like St. Martha.

If Sqirl is too bougie now, but you like the vibe and want even more fermented veggies in your grain and egg bowl, then this could be your spot. I confess, I have not yet eaten a full meal there, but I couldn't resist posting some early impressions from a small gathering I attended.





I'm not even sure if the pork belly tacos we tasted are on the menu, but they certainly should be, since they were Hoisin-intensive, fatty in the best way, mildly spicy flavor bombs. Natto wraps, on the other hand, are not the strongest fermented soybean product I've ever tasted but are still most likely a taste that appeals to a select few.

On the blackboard menu, only an oxtail pasta dish has meat in it - most of the bowls are composed of a number of unusual-sounding ingredients (roasted Koji ink cream, Jobs tears) and grains, possibly with an egg on top. Several Kombuchas are brewing on the shelves with innovative flavors like Rose and Elderflower, along with a slew of pickles that can be ordered in a $2 tasting plate.

Open just three weeks, Baroo is headed by chef Kwang Uh, who worked at New York's Picholine and Daniel and staged at Noma, then opened this simple yet innovative restaurant with his friend Matthew Kim. I'll certainly be back soon to what those Jobs Tears are all about.

East Hollywood: It's the next frontier. De Sano Pizza knows that already -- and maybe soon, everyone will.

Baroo, at 5706 Santa Monica Blvd, is open for lunch and dinner every day except Sunday.

Pot + Commissary in the First Issue of the Larchmont Ledger: How Many Forks?

Commissary's indoor-outdoor greenhouse space

Eating LA is now contributing to both the Los Feliz and the Larchmont Ledgers, two community newspapers that publish monthly in print and online. I'm not sure how it's possible that I never posted about eating several times at Pot (once with Anthony Bourdain and Roy Choi, brag, for a TV show promo of course). But now that I've tried Commissary too, it's time to make it right. Here's my review from the brand-new Larchmont Ledger. Click through to see how many forks it received.

It might not be fair to lump together Pot, a cheeky take on a Korean hotpot restaurant and Commissary, an equally-unorthodox approach to a breakfast, lunch and dinner hotel restaurant. But Koreatown's Line Hotel can be experienced all at once or in bits and pieces.
When Roy Choi, the man who brought food trucks into the 21st century with Kogi BBQ and then expanded into places like A-Frame and Sunny Spot, joined up with the recently remodeled mid-century hotel on Wilshire Blvd., it was clear it would reflect his brash approach to both flavors and marketing, with a weed-scented, hip-hop soundtracked sensibility.

Lobby bar at Pot

Walking into the lobby, a bar with comfy pentagonal booths offers updated classic cocktails and new creations like kimchi soju or tequila with sea urchin. The lobby coffee bar (open til 2 a.m. on weekends) serves Lamill coffee drinks (habanero mocha!), beer and wine along with Korean pastries like hot dog and ketchup buns and of course, clever toast (Laurence Fishbun is topped with anchovies) .
Down a corridor is Pot, an informal canteen offering accessible versions of hot pots and other Korean staples for diners who may or may not have much experience with real Korean restaurants. Servers in street-style chic and tables with clever shelves for flatware along with a pumping soundtrack give the windowless room a cacophonous energy. With typically Choi-esque names from Ganja Tang (pork neck hotpot) to Roger Wants Moore Octopussy grilled octopus, most dishes pack layers of sweetness, heat, salt and fat on top of each other until the diner keels over from either euphoria or a heart episode.

the kimchi fried rice of your dreams

The result is delicious but sometimes overly-rich dishes like kimchi fried rice, terrific potato pancakes and BBQ spicy pork. Hot pots come in pork-intensive, seafood or vegetarian varieties, and should be shared with several people. Come at lunch for a quieter experience and individually-sized hot pots, and don't miss the chili-oil slicked kat man doo dumplings.
Feeling more outdoorsy? Go past the hotel's reception desk and the mural made of plastic bleach bottles sprayed black, past the adorable Poketo gift shop and upstairs to Commissary. Next to the pool, a glass greenhouse-like structure filled with hanging plants, a bar and communal tables glows from within. Parties of two are likely to end up outdoors, where sleek heaters are able to keep out the cold most evenings. At Commissary, too, the vegetable-intensive menu plays tricks: like a children's bingo card, it offers just pictures of cauliflower, a carrot or a fish.

"lettuce"

But the dishes are much more complex than the pictures, and the server can explain each one at length. Beets join pistachios, goat cheese and frisee, while "lettuce" symbolizes an artfully-composed salad of grilled lettuce, bacon, pear and avocado with a curry-scented dressing. Roasted carrots, one of the hot food trends at the moment, are roasted almost to a crisp and topped with a zippy green sauce. Every hotel restaurant needs a club sandwich and a burger, so Commissary offers both, as well as a satisfyingly crispy pork schnitzel that hangs over the edge of the plate in proper German style. Bacon is often a supporting character despite the vegetable focus, in classic clam chowder or in a rigatoni dish where tart capers cut the richness of the cream sauce.
Cocktails continue the garden theme with herbs and touches of rhubarb or persimmon. They're so refreshing that it might be nice if Choi could give up serving them in plastic leftover containers (a nod to the way kitchen workers drink) and let diners enjoy them in proper glasses. Assembling a meal of small plates and cocktails can easily end up around $100 for two people, and though everything is well-prepared, the menu can seem like a bit of a hodgepodge.
But no matter where you eat at the Line, it will no doubt be irreverent, addictive and just a little over the top, just like Choi himself.

Pot and Commissary at the Line Hotel
3515 Wilshire Blvd.
213-368-3030

Cham Korean Bistro adds killer beer and wine, tapas too

What's the one thing you need most after sitting for ages on the 110 waiting for a huge tree to be cleared off the freeway like I did last night? It's gotta be a raspberry lambic float with vanilla ice cream, which you may now obtain at Cham Korean Bistro in Pasadena, courtesy of the casual modern Asian cafe's newly-minted beer and wine license. At a press preview dinner last night, we tried just about everything from Cham's new Korean tapas menu as well as their regular menu, along with selections from the small but very well-edited craft beer and wine list.
 
tofu pockets with spicy tuna, blue crab, seaweed,  and mizuna

A jumbo bottle of Lost Abbey Devotion helped my forget about the tree traffic, while HC tried the Maredsous, an unusual but delicious pairing with Korean food. Cham is one of the new-style Pasadena restaurants -- that is, ones that don't suck. I had lunch there earlier this year, but this was a great chance to try more of their menu of healthy casual Korean food. The tapas menu is priced well for nibbling with beer and includes bacon-wrapped Korean rice cakes, fried calamari tacos with kimchi, tempura green beans and ahi tuna with chimichurri sauce.
 
Cham's watermelon salad is an amazing deal at $5, with cool, crunchy watermelon paired with feta, figs and arugula.
 
For a main course, it's hard to choose between japchae (yam) noodles with vegetables and egg or bibimbap ($10), which comes with either beef, chicken, pork, ahi or tofu. If you need something even heartier, there's also bbq meat platters and Korean shortrib stew. For dessert, the afore-mentioned beer float is a must, or try rotating specials like pumpkin angel cake or creme fraiche cheesecake.
Located in an office building near the corner of Cordova and Lake, Cham is a handy place for local students and anyone looking to get away from the generalized mediocrity of Old Town.
Cham Korean Bistro 

851 Cordova St., Pasadena
626-792-2474
See more photos from Cham Korean Bistro on Flickr.

Don Dae Gam: Korean barbecue takes the porky path

thin-sliced pork belly before cooking

I first heard about Don Dae Gam from Josh at FoodGPS, who checked it out in its early days last fall. So when an assignment came up to choose a restaurant to try for the upcoming Mid-City Press newspaper, I remembered that Don Gae Gam was on my always-evolving "must-try" list. It's owned by the same people as Park's, which always comes up in discussions of the best Korean barbecue in L.A. But here the focus is on pork, though beef is available in some of the combo dinners. The mini-mall restaurant uses real charcoal, with a powerful ventilation system that mostly gets ride of the smoke from the grills. Korean restaurants often order combo dinners, which will serve two to four people, depending on how many side dishes you order.
We chose the $40 combo, which comes with three cuts of pork -- pork belly, pork neck and shortribs -- as well as several types of panchan, egg custard, a beer or soju, tofu soup and rice soup. We added a kimchi pancake since I've been on a big kimchi kick for the last year or so. I liked the thin pork belly, which was unseasoned and presented a blank canvas for the rice noodle wrappers, soybean sauce, sesame salt and chili sauces. Matt preferred the marinated shortribs, which the server cut up into manageable bits while they were grilling. Pork Korean barbecue seems to have less marinade in general, so it's more about the flavor of the pork. I think I might prefer the sauciness of the beef when it hits the caramelization of the grill, but some of the combos come with beef also, the better to compare grilled meats. Adventurous eaters can also try pork diaphragm or pork intestine. The panchan wasn't quite as wide of a selection as at some places, though it seems to change with each meal. I'd go back for the kimchi pancake alone, which managed to combine crispy, soft, tangy and just a bit greasy in the most delightful way. If you've had Korean barbecue with beef plenty of times already, this is the perfect place to branch out, and even try other dishes like the spicy pork and baby squid stew that sounds fiery and pretty amazing.The restaurant has a couple of nice touches, showing that it's a contemporary style rather than old-school place: A small children's play area is available for tots who tire of unending courses of kimchi and pork, and at the end of the meal the host takes customers' photos and asks you to draw a pig or write a note on a card to hang on the wall.
Don Dae Gam
1145 S Western Ave.
(323) 373-0700

Cham Korean Bistro: Pasadena's clean New Year's eating

Korean rice cakes are starchy, but accompanied with cruciferous vegetables -- "colon's little brooms," says Mario Batali.

At the start of the year, it seems like everyone is suddenly vowing to start "eating clean," posting Facebook resolutions to give up sugar and twittering ambitious exercise plans.
Here's one place to start: Cham Korean Bistro, a five month-old Korean fusion spot. The clean-lined space is just off Lake St., so it qualifies for the cardinal rule of Pasadena eating: Try to get out of Old Town.
Order dishes like bibimbap or a ssam garden bbq platter with beef, chicken, pork or tuna at the counter, then choose a booth made from minimalist laquered plywood. I tried toppoki ($6), a fat cylindrical rice cake that's like a chewy Korean gnocchi, slicked with a sweet teriyaki-type sauce and mixed with either beef or vegetables. Several dishes have a unusual touch, like the big crab claw trying to climb out of my cup of miso soup ($3). Miles' bibimbap (above, $10) and Colleen's short rib Korean stew ($12) were fresh and colorful, but maybe a little more plain and healthy-tasting than in a typical Koreatown joint. Like many places in Pasadena, Cham seems a touch more pricey than it needs to be, but in this case at least there's a good reason: The owner, a garment business entrepreneur, runs the restaurant as a non-profit and donates most of the proceeds to developing countries. After our lunch, the server delivered a bonus slice of creme fraiche cheesecake with a really nice milky tang to it -- not particularly healthy, but worth the indulgence. Sure, you can eat cheaper in Koreatown, but this is clean, healthy food -- perfect for ushering in a vegetable-intensive 2010.
Cham Korean Bistro
851 Cordova St.
Pasadena
(626) 792-2474

Hae Jang Chon Korean BBQ: An obsession with crispy bits

Saturday night's dining companion came equipped with the L.A. Times' recent 25 delectable dining deals article, so I relaxed and let him pick the restaurant, a refreshing change of pace for a food blogger. I haven't had Korean barbecue in quite a while, so we ended up at Hae Jang Chon, next to Kyochon Chicken on Sixth St. The all-you-can-eat meal for $16.99 includes a choice of a dozen meats. You could probably try all of them, but it's easier to keep track of what you're cooking if you select fewer than a dozen. I picked beef tongue (my new mini-obsession), marinated shortribs, bulgogi, pork belly and squid. The panchan arrived quickly -- it wasn't the most impressive selection I've seen, but we liked the tofu strips and the refreshing daikon slaw. A pile of cut-up kimchi pancake and a heap of kimchi are also placed on the grill, which you can snack on throughout the meal. The tongue cooks really fast, and my friend was surprised to find he liked it better than he thought he would. Pork belly seemed way too thick and fatty at first, but after a while it cooked way, way down and crisped up nicely. Service was really erratic -- the rice wrappers arrived only after we waved down a server, and after the last meats were put on the grill, they basically disappeared so we had to finish cooking the meats ourselves. By that time, we were too full for the kimchi fried rice that finishes the meal, but they never appeared to offer it anyway. I then became enraptured by various crunchy, caramelized nubbins of beef, pork, onion and kimchi. I just couldn't stop dipping them in the sesame oil and salt, wrapping them in rice paper and reveling in the splendor of the Maillard reaction. The quality is decent at Hae Jong Chon and the price is right, but unless you're a starving college kid, you won't really need an all you can eat experience. But no matter where you get your Korean Q, just make sure to save lots of room for those lovely blackened bits that linger on the griddle.
Hang Jong Chon
3821 W. 6th St.
(213) 389-8777

Making kimchi is easier than you would think

Granny Choe lays out kimchi ingredients: Nappa cabbage, onions, mustard greens, daikon, ginger, garlic, chile powder, sugar, salt.

Machine Project hosts some of the best food events, usually at really affordable prices. With Boingboing's Mark Frauenfelder and Homegrown Evolution's Kelly Coyne and Eric Knutzen organizing with an assist from SlowFoodLA, the Krautfest 2009 was destined for cabbagey awesomeness.
Here's Mark's report on BoingBoing. I couldn't make the kraut part, so I showed up to learn how to make my own kimchi.
Kimchi expert Granny Choe and her daughter showed us how it's done.

• The night before, you have to submerge the leaves from a Nappa cabbage in salted water. The next morning, you drain them.
• 

• Slice them up into about 1" slices into a large bowl. Now mix in some chopped scallions or onions, a cup of chopped mustard greens and a handful of shredded daikon if you like.
  

• Pound or pulverize an entire head of peeled garlic cloves and mix it with about an inch section of grated ginger, two teaspoons non-iodized salt, a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of pulverized cooked white rice and a cup of water. Pour that mixture over the cabbage.

• Now pour in a cup of powdered Korean red chile pepper. You need to get this at the Korean market -- cayenne pepper or Mexican chile powder is not the right stuff.

• Mix it all up, and it already looks like bright red kimchi ( above left). You can taste it, it's already pretty good before it even ferments. But you're not done yet. Like with yogurt or bread, you'll need some starter. Mix in a few tablespoons of kimchi from the store, or ideally from your last batch, to get the fermentation going.

• Now put it into a closed container (a big jar like the one at right is good) and leave it in a kitchen cupboard for a day (maybe two if it's chilly out). Put it in the fridge after two days, and voila, you've got kimchi! It's pretty forgiving stuff -- you can try out all kinds of different ingredients, and it will last for quite a while in the fridge, getting more and more fermented. Granny Choe says it's the interplay of the chile, garlic and onions that makes the magical kimchi juice. I left out the pulverized rice and daikon, but mine tastes just fine.
  

Have you ever made kimchi? Did you do anything differently from this class?

This Saturday and Sunday is another great SlowfoodLA food workshop at Machine Project -- you can learn how to make bread and pizza dough Saturday, and then build a pizza oven and bake it on Sunday.

Kyochon Chicken now open in Glendale

The Glendale Galleria has one of the better food courts in any ordinary, Hot Topic kind of mall. There's not just one but two stalls from perfectly respectable Massis Kebab, and a Brazilian place that has some of the best garlic collard greens around. Now there's another reason to not to fear the mall quite as much: Kyochon Chicken has opened a location in the mall, but it's substantially different from the 6th St. minimall location. The menu is both broader and narrower: there's several types of salads, chicken wraps and bowls and macaroni & cheese (huh?). But the chicken itself -- the centerpiece of this temple of Korean fried chicken worship -- is only available in wings, instead of the drumsticks, which are a superior crunch delivery system. The other fatal flaw, however necessary to operating in a mall food court, is that, judging from the speed with which my order was filled and the resulting lukewarm chicken, it must be cooked ahead of time in large batches. Now, as everyone who has been to Kyochon knows, it might take its own sweet time coming out but when it does you will be amply rewarded. The lukewarm wings still had a nice sweet and spicy flavor, and the broccoli salad with raisins and bacon wasn't half bad.
Verdict: If you desperately want to taste this stuff and you happen to be near the Galleria, it's not a bad lunch option. But if you want a real Korean fried chicken experience, go to the Sixth St. location, or to Bonchon, which is preferred by our fellow bloggers at Franklin Avenue.

Ondal 2: Life is a bowl of crabby bliss

Spicy crab soup for three at Ondal 2

It's always more fun to eat when there's a little showmanship with the meal. In the old days, this kind of thing was much more popular, with Lawry's mixing up Caesar salads tableside and no end of flaming crepes suzette desserts. Nowadays, tableside preparation is more likely to be found at Korean restaurants. At some, you cook your own meat on the grill in the center of the table; at the nicer ones, the server cooks your meat for you. The crab stew at Ondal 2 has got to be one of the more elaborate presentations. Tipped off by Mattatouille's very comprehensive description, we ventured to the southern fringe of Koreatown with Food GPS. We three very white, very non-Korean speaking diners were happy to find a friendly server who was happy to explain each step. As my father used to say at the Passover seder, here's the Cliff's Notes version of the meal.
While there's quite a few hotpot-style dishes on the menu, the specialty is crab stew. Three flower crabs (similar to blue crabs) will feed three to four people for $55, including all the copious side dishes. The meal starts with a nice selection of panchan including raw sliced sweet potato, potato salad, sweet seaweed dust, octopus, egg custard, a whole mackerel pike fish and chili-coated crab legs (above). Then the hotpot arrives with three crabs stuffed with rice and crab meat. Each diner gets a crab in a bowl of broth, and you scoop bits of roe and meat out while spooning up the broth. When the crab shell is finished, there's still enough soup, thick with mushrooms and bean sprouts and crab legs, for seconds and thirds.
The broth is rich with crab flavor, almost creamy, with a flavor profile that most resembles a spicier version of Provencal soupe de poissons. While there's still some broth in the pot, the dough lady arrives with a fistful of raw noodle dough, which she drops into the broth to simmer like homemade rustic pasta. After all the apps and several bowls of soup, we're starting to get full when the fried rice arrives.
Then the server cleans out the pot and stir-fries cooked rice, kimchi, onions and other vegetables. The rice picks up some flavor from the crab left in the bowl, and all the flavors meld together into some kind of tangy, spicy, rice happiness. The server suggests sipping cold kimchi juice to cut the richness and spicyness of the rice, but we find that a little de trop -- the fried rice alone is delicious enough.
A final bowl of cold barley soup is a refreshing finish to a long meal, although at stop at a Pinkberry or Red Mango after would be an appropriate as well.
A trip to Ondal 2 is well worth venturing outside of Koreatown proper, as much for the ceremonial pasta-cooking and rice-frying as for the richly-flavored stew.
Tip: Order the broth "slightly less spicy than medium" if you don't want to lose your taste buds before the rest of the courses arrive.

Ondal 2
4566 W Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90016
(323) 933-3228

Kogi BBQ Korean tacos: Jumping on the truck

Holiday shopping Korean taco eaters line up at the Kogi truck

Jeez, the L.A. food world moves fast. Only about two weeks since the Kogi BBQ Korean taco truck started feeding the voracious taco eaters of L.A., and I'm already feeling behind since I haven't tried it yet. I'd heard that the tacos were delicious, but that if you sign up for their Twitter feed, you might hear a little too often about where they're parked. Since I'm still Twitterless, I waited until the truck appeared on my route home at the Sunset Junction holiday fair Friday night and picked up two shortrib and two spicy pork tacos ($2 each). The kimchee and sesame leaf quesadilla special also sounded interesting, but I stuck with the tacos. Sam and I happily devoured them all, and he doesn't even much like spicy food. The spicy pork had just a touch of spice and the shredded pork was tender in a savory sauce, almost reminiscent of cochnita pibil. Shortrib or bulgogi was in kind of large chunks; the meat itself was a little plain and chewy but with the shredded cabbage and sauce on top, it made a lovely package. It would be even more awesome if the kalbi had that sweet, carmelized edge it gets when you cook it yourself in a restaurant, but hey, it's a truck, not a full on barbecue restaurant, albeit one run by real chefs.
"Why didn't you think of this?," a guy playfully harangued his girlfriend as they waited in front of the truck. Indeed -- why didn't we all think of this?

Kyochon Chicken: No going back after you've tried it

chicken bento box...cute, but stick to the sticks (legs)

Although EatingLA loves to eat just about everything, we usually prefer healthyish Asian or European food to categories like fried chicken, hotdogs, hamburgers and doughnuts. But naturally, I make frequent exceptions. So for day three of the staycation, I tried the much-discussed Kyochon Chicken, which is Korean, so it doesn't count as junk food. And besides, the slogan on the wall reads "Healthy food for ecstatic body and soul," so that proves it. Healthy fried chicken. Right. The Koreatown location wasn't too crowded when I got there at lunchtime, and although I did make it through much of the LA Weekly's Best of LA issue before the food arrived, the wait wasn't as long as some people have experienced. The chicken takes 20 minutes or so to be cooked to order, but the wait and the calories are well worth it as this stuff is seriously crispy, juicy, spicy and tangy. It's like if Panda Express' best order of orange chicken ever mated with Roscoe's fried chicken and created a whole new category of habit-inducing twice-fried fowl. It's also a shame, because I never really felt the need to eat fried chicken before, but now I'm going to have to stop by Kyochon whenever I have a few minutes to wait, because once you taste it, you won't stop thinking about it. I tried the spicy variety in a large bento box ($7.50) which comes with two chicken legs, some zesty chicken bulgogi, cabbage doused in ketchup and mayo, fries and rice. Probably overkill, but I'm a sucker for bento boxes. All you really need to do is order three or four legs per person (or wings if you prefer them), take them home, pair with some vegetable side dish, and add beer. Ahh.....
Kyochon Chicken
3833 W. 6th St.
213-739-9292

Gyenari -- hard to pronounce, easier to eat

I wish I had taken this picture of the Bright Bloom dessert, but I didn't...

It's funny how incredibly important geography is in L.A. At a press tasting for the new Korean BBQ restaurant Gyenari, on Culver City's most hopping block, the Westside crowd were all like, "This is so much more convenient than going to Koreatown." Well, it's not more convenient for me, but I can still see the appeal of a place like Gyenari. (First Gjelina, now Gyenari -- why not just call your restaurant Gynecologist?)

There' s a patio and large bar area in front

While I'm extremely adventurous when it comes to Chinese and Thai food, I sometimes find Korean restaurants kind of intimidating. Plus I've been to a few where, frankly, the meat just isn't that great. The cavernous, loungey Gyenari is undeniably Americanized, but two days later, I'm still thinking about the delicious caramelization we achieved after playing with our Gyenari Galbee beef shortribs on the gas grill. I also loved the shrimp and kim chee mandu dumpling -- like an uptown potsticker.

Galbee shortribs, pre-caramelization, with Kurobata pork belly in front

Other dishes we tasted included a very solid bibimbap with shortribs and japchae glass noodles -- anyone know a good place in Koreatown for these?

Another good thing about this dinner was that there were actual vegetables -- unusual at a tasting dinner -- from panchan of kimchee, asparagus, zucchini and spicy shredded radish to fresh veggies with the black cod in garlic sauce, and there's several vegetarian dishes on the menu. Dessert of banana cream pie and green tea donuts with raspberry buttermilk dipping sauce was nice, but even better was the incredibly refreshing Bright Bloom -- a large dish of milky shaved ice topped with an array of fresh fruits and mango sorbet. So if the eight miles from Culver City to Koreatown seems a tad far, or if you'd like a sparkling lichee martini with your non-threatening Korean BBQ, Gyenari is worth a try.

Sanjang Coffee Garden: best re-use of building award

Eating L.A. doesn't hand out awards, but if we did, the best re-use of building award would go to Sanjang Coffee Garden on Virgil and 1st. I drive by this corner every day, and for several years it harbored one of the smallest and scariest-looking private schools I've ever seen, the kind of place where you wanted to rescue the kids so they wouldn't be forced to go to school in a tiny pink stucco building surrounded by chain link fencing. All that is gone, and somehow from the stucco ruins has risen a Zen-like Korean coffee garden. The interior has soothing wood walls and glass jars lined with teas, while the outdoor area is large and attractive.

The sun-dappled courtyard will probably be hopping at midnight.

A wood-burning firepit is the focal point of a huge grassy patio. They're obviously expecting a crowd of, I imagine, young Koreans looking for an alternative to beer bars, so the coffee and tea drinks are priced high ($6-7) for maximum lingering, and it's open until 2 a.m. In addition to all the usual cappucinos and ice-blended drinks, there's apricot ice-blended, jujube tea, black bean and sesame soy milk tea, and the de rigueur plain-flavored non-fat frozen yogurt with toppings. There's also free high-speed wireless internet and lunch items including sandwiches, ramen, udon and grilled sweet potato. (Drinks are more reasonably priced for take-out and with lunch). Oh, and for a while, they're giving out free coffees to go in the morning, starting at 7 a.m.!
Sanjang Coffee Garden
101 S. Virgil Ave.
(213) 387-9190

Still loving the bibimbap

After trying the refreshing tofu-veggie bibambap at Farmer's Market's La Korea, readers tipped me off the the dol sot bibimbap at Sake House Miro on La Brea. It never would have occurred to me to look for a Korean dish at this cute Japanese pub, but since it's one of the few Asian restaurants of any type near my office, I rushed over to try it the first chance I got. Of course, L.A. was still in the grips of Bangkok-level humidity, and the dol sot part indicates that the mixed vegetable and rice dish is served in a steaming hot granite bowl. The server mixes a raw egg into the mixture which includes marinated beef strips, shitake mushrooms, spinach and rice, then anoints the mixture with hot sauce to the specified level of spiciness. Since the granite bowl holds the heat forever, it takes a good long time to cool off. When it finally does, it's worth it, because the egg is cooked through, and the rice that comes into contact with the hot bowl has formed a tasty crispy crust that's like a prize at the bottom of the dish. This is my new favorite Korean dish, but I have to say this version was much more decadent and filling than the room-temp veggies and tofu adorning the first one I tried. So remember: when it's over 80 degrees, go for the regular bibimbap. On a cool winter day when you want a dish to stick to your ribs, try the flavorful, crunchy dol sot bibimbap.