Tag: Korean food

Eat These Now – Dried Baby Sardines at DJK

[imagebrowser id=1273]

The Japanese call them niboshi.

Korean food blogs (the ones written in English anyway) refer to them as dried baby sardines.

They are slightly sweet, a little more than a little salty and very fishy.

They are also an essential part of most pan chan — the assortment of appetizers laid before you at the start of most Korean meals.

You will either love them or hate them. ELV and his staff love them.

As for Dae Jang Keum (DJK for short), unfortunately, those sardines and the ban chan (English spellings go both ways, no matter what Slapsie Maxie says), were the highlight of our meal. The daeji bulgogi (spicy marinated pork) was anything but, and the meat looked and tasted more steamed than barbecued.

Looking out the window we could see Tofu Hut right across the street, and after a couple of bites, we wished we had gone to our old reliable. Nonetheless, DJK was filled with fellow Korean travelers who seemed to be enjoying themselves, and The Food Gal® tells us it is one of her Korean-American friend’s mother’s favorite place to get her galbi on.

Perhaps they pegged us as wimps when it comes to this food, but if they had looked, they would’ve seen us polishing off those sardines like they were M&Ms. Maybe then they wouldn’t have served us a big, boring pile of steamed meat.

Too often, Americans (and Korean-Americans we’re guessing) get nothing but the same old, same old when it comes to Seoul food (like we did here). To see a level of cooking and presentation rarely experienced outside of the homeland, click here for gorgeous pictures of Korean Royal Court cuisine at its best.

Our meal above, including tip, came to $30.

DAE JANG KEUM KOREAN BBQ & TOFU RESTAURANT

3943 West Spring Mountain Road

Las Vegas, NV 89102

702.638.2222

SOYO on KLAS TV (CBS) Channel 8’s Dishing and Dining

No shaky leg, an overuse of the word “really” (really(?)), and equating bai top (whelk) with escargot (??) highlight (lowlight) today’s appearance* on Channel 8 with the always lovely Denise Valdez.

* Since we’re now doing these live on the noon news, when mistakes are made, it’s damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! — with nary a moment to spare in the two minutes allotted.

E-JO KOREAN Kool

[nggallery id=1154]

We at ELV have decided Korean is our favorite Asian food.

Of course, they do kimchi you to death, and everything is either a crudely cut stir-fry or a giant bowl with 94 ingredients in it, but the spices always seem right, the heat is always gently warming, and nothing is ever as salty as the Chinese make it. Best of all, they are inordinately fond of placing huge color pictures of everything everywhere so fat white boys can simply point and eat.

Remarkably, no matter what the restaurant, the food always comes out looking exactly like those pictures. Imagine any American restaurant — from a greasy spoon to the Cheesecake Factory to Spago — trying to do that.

Plus, Koreans are friendly, the women are beautiful, they like to take a drink now and then, and they are seriously in love with meat in all its forms.

Our staff has also fallen in love with Korean food because they discovered a good one — called E-Jo — withing walking distance of our office. It is also located within an old Taco Bell, making us feel morally superior every time we give these owners our hard-earned won instead of fattening the coffers of a large, impersonal, multi-national company.

E-Jo is small, impeccably clean, welcoming, reasonable and easy to navigate. The owners/waitrons may look a little shocked when you (a non-Korean) first walk in, but they are all smiles after that. Everything is cooked to order, and the tasty snaps on the wall are so big even David Paterson could read them. What this means is, you can study them while you wait for your food and plan your next Korean foray even as you’re eating. Just as important, English translations come with every picture, saving you the embarrassment of trying to pronounce such tricky Korean phrases as “bulgogi” and “fried chicken.” How cool is that?

ELV’s lunch for two pictured above came to $31 + $7 tip.

E-JO KOREAN RESTAURANT

3429 South Jones Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89146

702.368.1004