Korean Soul At Seoul Garden

The first time I ever ate at Seoul Garden in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, I was less than impressed. The menu was confusing, the language barrier between myself and the staff was an issue, and I just plain wasn't used to the flavors and textures of Korean food. Since that first meal seven years ago, I have spent much time and energy educating myself and my palate about the delicious diversity that Korean food has to offer. Since that first meal, I have eaten at several different northeast Ohio restaurants specializing in this type of cuisine and I felt that it was high time that I returned to this first spot with a much more finely tuned palate.

On a random Saturday afternoon, I decided to stop in for lunch at around 12:30 PM. Seoul Garden shared the building with the Elks Lodge in Cuyahoga Falls and was quite close to the Ernest Angley's Cathedral of Tomorrow (which is a popular landmark for those in the Akron / Cuyahoga Falls area). Technically, the address was 2559 State Road, Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44223 and they can be reached at 330-929-9971. As of this writing, the restaurant did not have its own website. Parking was to the left of the building and the small lot in front of the restaurant.

Here was a shot of the front of the building, visible from State Road:


Once inside, my eyes adjusted to the darker environment and I sat myself at one of the empty tables. Two prominent facts sprung forth from my memory of my last visit. First, I was the only non-Korean person in the restaurant. Second, there seemed to be so few restaurant patrons. Today's visit was eerily similar. After I sat myself, an older gentleman running the front of the house stopped over to take my drink order and drop off a menu.

Here were photographs of the menu:





As I began to look over the menu, I began to realize why I had experienced such a difficult time ordering the last time I was in. Unlike other Korean restaurants at which I've eaten that have pictures either on the menu or on the wall, Seoul Garden's menu had zero illustrations. You had to completely rely on either the name of the dish itself or the English description provided. I often find that menu descriptions get lost in translation and try not to depend too much on them. The other problem I noticed today was a common one: different restaurants spell the same dish differently. For instant, the famous Korean stirred rice dish, Bibimbap, was spelled "Bi Bim Bob" on the printed menu and "Bi Bim Bab" on one of the few pictured dishes dimly illuminated on the wall.

Fortunately, this time around I recognized more than I didn't, but I can see why I had been so easily confused the first time I came to the restaurant as a Korean food neophyte. Seeing that there was a fried dumpling appetizer, I thought I would start out my meal by giving that a try. Shortly after ordering it, this arrived at my table:


Accompanying my fried dumplings was a soy sauce, rice vinegar, and chili dipping sauce with added scallions:


The first point I would like to make about the fried dumplings was their perfect fry job. I touched a dumpling with my finger and it came away clean and grease free. I tried the first dumpling sans dipping sauce and could taste the savoriness from the meat, the gentle heat from ginger and the pungency of garlic. This was a tasty dumpling. When my server stopped by to check on me, I asked him if the meat was pork. He informed me that they were, in fact, beef. Of course, I should've known that they were beef! I've had mandoo (aka mandu) at other Korean restaurants, but the dumplings were steamed and not deep fried.

After trying the dumpling naked, I then tried them dipped in the sauce. The sauce added just the right amount of seasoning, acidity, and spicy kick from the chili. The dumplings on their own were good. With the sauce, they were awesome. While I initially debated whether to eat all six dumplings in order to save room for the rest of my lunch, the minute I tasted them, I knew I would have zero willpower to resist the entire plate.

With most Korean meals I've been served, before the main course comes out, banchan are brought to the table. Every restaurant seems to serve different banchan, although kimchee seems to be a common denominator amongst them all. Soon after my appetizer plate was cleared, my banchan arrived at the table.

Here were the first four:


Clockwise from the top left you have pickled cucumbers, a chili spiced vegetable, bean sprouts and a salted, dried fish (sadly, the actual names of these particular banchan are unknown to me). The pickled cucumbers were the best among the lot and would appeal to most American palates. The chili spiced vegetable was interesting, a bit spicy and crunchy, but didn't have a very distinct vegetal flavor. The bean sprouts (which I think were soybean sprouts), had an earthiness to them and a unique flavor that other bean sprouts don't possess. The dried, salted fish were a flavor that may be popular with Koreans, but many Americans would have a problem with the assertiveness of the fishy flavor and crunchy texture.

Here was a shot of the other four dishes of banchan:


Again, clockwise from the top left you have a vinegared seaweed salad, what I thought was a pressed tofu dish, a sliced cooked potato in a slightly sweet dressing, and finally, that most famous of Korean dishes, kimchee. These were all quite nice, with Seoul Garden's kimchee having a more acidic tinge to it than I am normally used to. I liked this.

Within a few moments of my banchan arriving, the main event, the Dol Sot Bi Bim Bob (that was how it was spelled on their menu) arrived hot and sizzling:


Dolsot refers to the fact that the contents are served in a rocket hot stone bowl. The heat from the bowl helps to form a nice crusty layer on the rice sitting on the bottom of the bowl. Since bibimbap literally means "stirred rice," after adding a generous portion of chili sauce I used the spoon provided with my chopsticks to stir the contents of the bowl together, breaking the yolk and using the heat from the bowl to cook the sunnyside up egg. I was pleased that the egg came out with the yolk still runny. I didn't even have to make it a point to try and get the egg cooked that way; that was how it came out of the kitchen.

After stirring the contents of the bowl, this was what I ended up with as I put down the spoon and picked up my chopsticks:


To say that this was good was an understatement; this was great. Even after eating all of my appetizer and sampling from the various bowls of banchan, before I knew what had happened, I reached the bottom of the bowl. The creaminess from the egg worked beautifully with the crunchiness from the cooked rice. The salty and savory meat worked well with the plainness of the white rice. The snap and freshness from the vegetables really sang in my mouth. I don't know that this was the BEST version of bibimbap that I've ever had, but it was certainly among top five.

Oddly, in a twist that I've never come across before in a Korean restaurant, my lunch entrée was served with a bowl of totally clear soup:


Containing scallions, cabbage, and more of the bean sprouts, the broth was absolutely clear, a Korean consommé, if you will. While I didn't detect any scents from the ocean when I smelled it, I guessed that it was probably a beef consommé and a very light one, in terms of color and flavor, at that. While the soup came out at the same time as my entrée, I kept the soup until the end and used it more as a palate cleanser and aid in digestion.

With tax and tip, I ended up spending about $20 today for lunch at Seoul Garden. While this may seem expensive, it was completely in line with other Korean restaurants in northeast Ohio. There were some pretty pricey menu items on the rear of the menu, but many of those were dishes that were meant to be split amongst multiple people. While the flavors at Seoul Garden were quite good and even more important, quite authentic, I would have reservations recommending it to readers who aren't comfortable with either the language or the descriptions provided on the menu. My advice? Take someone along who IS comfortable and you will be rewarded with some really excellent food. I know that it will not be another seven years before I return again for another meal.

Two For The Price Of One: Siamone's Double Header

Visit The First

After a long week at work, I decided to treat myself and return to a small restaurant I had discovered several months ago, Siamone's Thai Pub. I had been so impressed with the quality of the food that when I wrote up my last entry covering my experience there, I actually fast tracked it to the front of my publishing queue. Since then, I had returned one other time in order to try the Phnom Penh noodles in soup, or what in most Vietnamese restaurants would simply be called Pho. I knew it was time to return to try another item that had caught my eye the first time I went.

I was slightly surprised to see that the restaurant was only half-way full when I arrived at 6:30 PM on a Friday night. I suppose I was relieved that I would be able to get a seat right away, but a little shocked that they weren't busier. Regardless, I picked out a two-top table in the moderately lit bar and ordered a water from my server. While I knew what I would be having for my entree, I hadn't quite worked out what I wanted as a starter.

As I scanned the list of possibilities, I decided to give the Coconut Chicken soup (which would be Tom Kha Gai in the original Thai) a shot, seeing that it was only $3.99. After only a few short minutes, my server returned with a large bowl of creamy soup:


Filled with mushrooms, scallions, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, red bell pepper, chicken, and most surprising of all, diced tomato, the soup was incredibly well done. It was creamy, tart, sweet, spicy and earthy all at the same time. The chicken and vegetables were cooked perfectly and the broth ... oh my gosh, the broth! Honestly, as good as the solid ingredients were in the soup, when I realized that I had eaten most of them and only broth remained, I literally picked up the bowl and held it close to my face so that the distance from the bowl to my mouth was as small as possible. The broth was absolutely divine. In an interesting twist, the tomatoes worked well because the acidity of the diced tomato, not the sweetness, actually helped cut through the fattiness from the coconut milk. The spice level was just enough to make it interesting, but not overpowering in the least. I actually thought about ordering a second bowl of this soup and just skipping the entree entirely.

After nearly licking the bowl clean after finishing the soup, I was left with this:


A lone piece of lemongrass and a single kaffir lime leaf now sat at the bottom of the bowl waiting for my server to come and take away the dirty dish to the kitchen. If you like Thai flavors, you will LOVE this soup. I was already looking forward to returning to Siamone's just for this soup.

But, I had come tonight to try something else on the menu, the Beef Bulgogi in Stone Hot Pot, or as those more familiar with Korean dishes would know it, Dolsot Bibimbap. I have eaten bibimbap at other restaurants, but only rarely been served in the stone hot pot that was infamous for creating that nice crusty rice layer at the bottom of the bowl. Bibimbap, for those who don't know, is actually two words, bibim or "stirred" and bap or "rice". The concept of bibimbap is that cooked rice is placed in the bottom of a bowl and various raw and cooked items are placed on top of it. When the diner receives her bowl, additional accoutrement called banchan are added to taste and the entire affair is stirred around with the chopsticks, thus blending the flavors before eating it. Banchan can be anything from kimchi (fermented cabbage) to gochuzhang (chili pepper paste). The word dolsot actually refers to the fact the bibimbap is served in a heated stone bowl.

Traditionally, bibimbap is topped with an egg, authentically served raw in Korea and more commonly fried in America. Unfortunately, due to Americans' wariness of eating raw eggs, most Korean cooks not only fry the egg, but cook it until the yolk is cooked all the way through. Every place I've ordered this dish, I've had to really work at making sure not only my server, but also the cook knows that while I don't mind the egg being fried, I want the yolk runny. Most cooks making this dish aren't usually American natives and don't understand the concept of "sunny-side up" or "over easy" eggs. At one place in Massillon, Ohio, I finally was able to break the language barrier by saying, "Only cook the egg on one side."

With great trepidation I waited to see what came out of the kitchen. I could actually hear my dish arriving from around the corner before I saw it. As the tray containing my bowl approached the table, I could hear and more importantly smell the rice sizzling at the bottom of the bowl. This was what was set down in front of me:


The rice was hard to see in the above photo because of all of the wonderful ingredients on top. My server mentioned that she thought the cook might have cooked the egg too long, but when she picked up the tray, the yolk jiggled so she figured it would be just fine. While the whites were a little crispier than I like, the yolk was definitely runny. In Siamone's version, none of the banchan were brought to the table. The kimchi had already been added to the bowl for me as well as a little bit of the Korean chili paste. Knowing my penchant for spicy food, I asked the waitress if she could bring me the spice condiment "caddy" that they had at the restaurant. She began to explain that the cook had added some chili paste to the dish already and I gently stopped her mid-sentence and responded, "Trust me, I'll be needing more spice than that."

While I waited, I looked at the bowl of thick darn brown sauce accompanying my dolsot bibimbap:


This was the teriyaki sauce, which was essentially soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and corn starch to thicken it. I knew that the dish came with it, but was reluctant to use it. I tasted it anyway, just to be sure. As much as I've loved Siamone's food up to this point, there was no place on that tray for this sauce. It was just a bad pairing. And for all of the tasty authenticity that Siamone's had worked so hard on promoting, I have no idea why you would pair a classically Korean dish with a Japanese sauce. Actually, not even so Japanese as the thickening of the sauce with cornstarch was more of a Chinese technique. Either way, I put the sauce to the side and waited for the condiment caddy to arrive.

Once it did, I chose to apply several heaping tablespoons of sambal, which in this case was a chunky combination of chilies, garlic, vinegar, and salt. I then broke the egg yolk with my chopsticks and stirred the entire mixture around, careful not to touch the still hot stone bowl. As I dug in, every mouthful would be different because of the stirring. One bite would contain the grilled marinated beef and some kimchi, the next bite would contain some of the crispy rice from the bottom of the bowl and the next I would get some of the shredded carrots and bean sprouts. It was an incredibly good version of bibimbap. The sambal added a nice bit of heat without overwhelming the dish entirely. I was a little worried about the kimchi already being added to bowl as it can have quite a strong flavor, but this kimchi was mild and delicious and added only the slightest bit of tang. I actually only managed to eat half of my entree and ended up bringing the rest home for a delicious lunch the next day.

Other than the really odd teriyaki sauce pairing with my entree, my entire experience just goes to underscore how really wonderful the food at Siamone's Thai Pub is. If you love these flavors or just want to learn what these flavors are, I implore you to seek out Siamone's and give them a try for yourself. While Siamone's does use local ingredients from time to time (e.g., the diced tomato in my Tom Kha Gai), she also understands the balance that the dishes from this region of the world need to have. Should you decide to order the dolsot bibimbap, I suggest you skip the teriyaki and go right for the more authentic flavor of the sambal. If you're a chili-head like me, you won't be sorry that you did. I'm looking forward to returning soon.


Visit The Second

And return I did. In doing this double header, I wanted to share even more of Siamone's wonderful menu with you, gentle reader. While I have noted before that a lot of the appetizers are fairly expensive, today I decided to try and keep the balance of the overall bill in check by choosing one of the more inexpensive entrees. In the past I have tried the chicken and coconut soup and the Cambodian spring rolls. This time around, I went with an old Thai stand-by, chicken satay:


All of the elements of a typical chicken satay were on the plate, however, there were a few differences. For starters, the normal sweet and sour sauce with a few pickled vegetables were replaced by it's opposite, a lot of pickled vegetables with just a little bit of sauce. While the flavor was most familiar, the use of the the condiment as a "dipping" sauce was obviously lost. I had to eat or move most of the vegetables so I could get at the meager amount in the bottom of the cup. The second deviation was in the peanut sauce. While the sauce did have peanuts in it, it tasted much more strongly of butter, to the point of reminding me of a buerre blanc. The remarkably yellow sauce even made it look like it had been mounted with quite a bit of butter, too.

The chicken was nicely grilled and given the unusual flavor of the peanut sauce, overall the dish was very good. Still a bit pricey at $8, but it definitely was filling and could easily serve as a single appetizer for 2-3 adults.

For dinner tonight I decided to have a bowl of the Phnom Penh noodles in soup, or in the more Vietnamese vernacular, Pho. Even though it was one of the more inexpensive items on the restaurant's menu, it certainly wasn't lacking in flavor or portion size:


With my pho came the obligatory bean sprout and lime garnishes:


And the condiment caddy, the "box of hot":


I added a few bean sprouts, a nice squirt of lime juice and a healthy amount of one of my favorite condiments in the world, sriracha. I stirred it all into the broth and took my first spoonful. Absolute heaven. The richness from the broth, the spiciness from the sriracha, and the acid from the lime juice all played so nicely with each other. Oddly, one flavor I detected this time that I didn't the last time I enjoyed this dish at Siamone's was a gentle sweetness. It wasn't a predominant flavor, but rather subtly sitting in the background. I greedily slurped up soup, noodles, tender cuts of beef, scallion, and red pepper. Because I had finished my chicken satay appetizer, I was only able to get through about half of this bowl of soup. Fortunately, I was able to take the remainder home with me for lunch the next day. Not quite as good as fresh out of the kitchen, but still pretty darn tasty.

Overall, Siamone's Thai Pub continues to impress me with its fantastic menu and spot-on flavors. The somewhat unappealing teriyaki sauce and the rather unusual peanut sauce from my two visits here really were anomalies in the overall Asian flavor profile I have been enjoying since I discovered the restaurant. The fact that Siamone's is local to Akron just makes me that much happier. I strongly encourage you to check them out if you live anywhere in the Akron area. If you are from out-of-town and like good Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, or Cambodian food, make it a point to add a stop in your journey to try them out. You won't be disappointed that you did.

Extra Helpings: Tantalizing The Senses At Ha Ahn

Although it may seem like I plan them, happy accidents happen to me quite frequently. I finally decide on a restaurant to visit, plan the date and time, take the time to drive to the restaurant only to find out that the restaurant is closed. Because this situation honestly happens pretty infrequently, I never bother to premeditate a backup plan. This has led me to some surprisingly tasty discoveries as I scramble to replace the intended restaurant visit with a new one. In the case of the South Market Bistro in Wooster, Ohio, this led me to Broken Rocks Bakery and Tulipan, two excellent finds. Today's adventure was supposed to be to Superior Pho for a nice hot steaming bowl of pho with my good friend and fellow blogger, Nancy.

I arrived shortly after 1 PM on a Monday afternoon to find that there was only one day per week that Superior Pho was closed. I'm guessing that you, gentle reader, can pretty much surmise that the restaurant was closed. As luck would have it, however, just further down the hallway in the exact same building was a small Korean restaurant named Ha Ahn (or Ha An depending on who was spelling it). Neither Nancy nor myself had ever eaten here, but both of us had heard good things through word of mouth. Disappointed that neither of us were going to get our Vietnamese "fix," we decided to throw caution to the wind and turn our attention to having a nice Korean lunch instead.

Before I get too ahead of myself on the review, I think it would probably be prudent to spend a few seconds discussing how to find Ha Ahn. The address I found on the Internet was 3030 Superior Avenue, Unit 108, Cleveland, OH 44114. They can also be reached at 216-664-1152. Not surprisingly, there was no website. If you already know how to find Superior Pho, then you will have no problems finding Ha Ahn. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, here was the easiest way to find the restaurant. Find your way to the corner of Superior Avenue and East 30th. Continue on Superior Avenue east for one block. Make a right hand turn onto East 31st Street. Directly behind the building on the right will be an ample parking lot. The parking was free here. Both Superior Pho and Ha Ahn had an entrance that was only accessible from the back of the building. Don't bother looking for signage visible from Superior; trust me, you won't see any.

The signage you will see, however, was easily visible once I pulled into the parking lot and got out of my car:


Once inside the rather small restaurant, we were greeted warmly and seeing as there were no other customers besides Nancy and myself, we choose the table with the best lighting. Walking into this space, you can't help but notice the immense pictorial menu on the wall:



Just like at Wonton Gourmet, the owners of Ha Ahn knew that a picture was worth a thousand words. Each item was identified with Korean characters as well as a translation at the bottom of the photograph. In addition, each of the dishes had a tuple associated with it (i.e. B-1, C-3, etc.) which tied it to the printed menu that our server handed to us:




While Nancy and I both studied the wall and hand menus quite attentively, I don't think that either of us came to the conclusion that there was a one-to-one match between the two. That being said, quite a bit of each menu was found on the other. One other interesting note about the wall menu: Several of the photographs had a number of circular red stickers located on the same line as the translation. Based on my memory of some of these dishes I've had in the past, I surmised that the number of red stickers indicates a "spice" level. Those with no stickers were considered mild. Those with four stickers were considered quite spicy. While I didn't ask my server about my assumption, Nancy seemed to feel my conclusion was a well-reasoned one.

Shortly after dropping off our menus, our server returned with a pot of toasted barley tea:


Barley tea is quite commonly served at Korean restaurants, but Ha Ahn's version was strikingly good. As an American, this was a flavor I most commonly associated with unsweetened breakfast cereals (think Bran Flakes). It may seem to be unusual to consume this in liquid form, but once you've acquired a taste (and I have), it is quite comforting and delicious. The tea at Ha Ahn was so good, in fact, that Nancy and I proceeded to go through two pots of it.

Already present on the table when you first sit down was a small condiment caddy:


Besides a spot for the typical salt and pepper shaker, the two liquid condiments were rice wine vinegar in the clear bottle and soy sauce in the darker bottle. While neither of us had the need for the rice wine vinegar, a few drops of soy sauce here and there really amped up different parts of the meal.

Since there were only two of us at lunch today, Nancy and I decided to split an appetizer and then each order our own lunch item. As most of the items on the menu consisted of soups or noodle dishes, there were only a few items that would qualify as an "appetizer." Fortunately, steamed ground beef and tofu dumplings called ManDoo (or Mundoo) were available as a standalone item. Completely made in-house, you get eight generous dumplings for only $6.95:


Along with the dumplings came a chili-sesame seed-scallions sauce :


And here was a single dumping on my plate dressed with just a bit of the chili sauce:


Along with just a drop or two of soy sauce, this was heaven on a plate. The dumpling was tender but still had some chew to it, the beef and tofu filling was light and delicious, and the oomph that the chili sauce brought made this little morsel sing in my mouth. It should be noted that the easiest way to transfer the dumpling from the steaming basket to your plate was through the use of the long-handled spoon that every diner receives. The dumpling dough was delicate enough that trying to manhandle them with chopsticks would've easily torn them.

Having finished our appetizer, Nancy and I put in our individual lunch orders. Several minutes later, these Bento boxes appeared, one for each of us:


These were banchan (also spelled panchan) and are a combination of Korean appetizers as well as items you can use to "dress up" the impending entree. Kimche (or cabbage that has been fermented in chili paste) is a common occurrence. The fact that the banchan today came in a Bento box was a little unusual. Normally each item is plated on individual plates. Then again, our server only had to carry over two boxes instead of eight smaller plates.

Starting with the upper left of the above photo and working clockwise, you have a Korean vegetable called gobo that seemed to have been infused with a sweet / sour treatment:


Gobo is another name for the burdock root, a common vegetable in Asian cookery. While Ha Ahn's treatment of it wasn't particularly sweet or sour, it went well with some of the spicier flavorings also contained in the banchan.

Next up was the kimche:


Made with Napa cabbage, this had a nice kick to it but wasn't overly fermented. While I did sample this straight out of the Bento box, I mixed the majority of it into my lunch entree.

Next up was the strangest of the four banchan we were served today:


When the Bento boxes were first set down in front of Nancy and myself, we each immediately began taking pictures. Nancy wondered aloud what this strange looking concoction might be. Somewhat half-jokingly, I said, "It looks like chicken salad." Once the photographs were finished and we each began sampling items off the boxes, I finally got around to trying it. It ACTUALLY WAS chicken salad. Nancy was sure that we had been given this instead of something more traditional because of our lack of Korean appearance, but upon questioning our server she insisted that the chicken salad was what everyone received. The chicken salad itself was dressed in mayonnaise and as far as a chicken salad goes, it was actually pretty decent. How this was supposed to integrate into my lunch entree, however, intrigued me throughout my lunch. In the end, ironically, this was the one item I didn't finish.

The final item in the Bento box was something I have seen at other Korean restaurants, a cold potato salad:


Dressed in a mildly spicy dressing tossed with a copious amount of sesame seeds, these were a tasty treat that I enjoyed not so much mixed into my entree, but as an occasional diversion in between bites of my entree.

Speaking of which, while many of the items on the menu were speaking to me, none were as loud as the Bibimbap Dolsot:


Bibimbap literally means "stirred rice." Essentially, you start with a layer of cooked rice in the bottom of your bowl and add many delicious items on top of it such as shredded carrots, bean sprouts, marinated and cooked beef (also known as bulgogi), nori strips, and a fried egg. The "dolsot" indicates that all of the above will actually be served in a heated stoneware bowl. The heated bowl along with a layer of oil underneath the rice actually continues to cook the rice and give it a wonderful crispy texture, not unlike the socarrat in a traditional Spanish paella.

In an amazing play to many of my senses, I could both hear and smell the sizzling of the rice as soon as our server emerged from the kitchen, well before I could see her. Along with my lunch came a bottle of Korean hot sauce:


Comprised of hot chili paste that had been diluted with both rice wine vinegar and a little bit of sweetener, this reminded me of a spicier Thai sweet chili sauce. I applied a very liberal amount to the top of my bowl:


And stirred to break up the perfectly cooked egg and distribute all of the ingredients in the bowl:


I was extremely happy today with how my egg was cooked. Normally when an American orders this dish, the egg is cooked completely through. While I don't know that Koreans have a word for "sunnyside up eggs," when I used the words "runny" and "soft," my server seemed to understand what I wanted. One of the first items that struck me was how little beef was in the bowl. As you can see from the pictures above, the bowl was definitely not lacking for food. I have a feeling that this bowl of bibimbap was probably a tad more authentic than versions I've had elsewhere. In many Asian cultures, because of the relative high cost and scarcity of meat, most of the meal is split between rice and vegetables. This was definitely the case today. Although to be fair, I didn't miss the excess of meat.

All of the flavors played so well together and the squirt or two of Korean hot sauce added just the right amount of heat to the party. The textural element that the sauteed rice added was also a nice addition. I will warn you, gentle reader, the rice from the bottle of the bowl will stay rocket hot for the entire duration of the meal, so be careful when consuming it. The mushrooms added a wonderful earthiness to the flavor as well as a nice chewy texture and the nori strips that decorated the top of the bowl added a bit of a savory element that one associates with the ocean. Hands down, this was the best bibimbap I think I have ever had. Anywhere.

While I did have a bite of Nancy dish,


I'm going to let her describe the dish to you on her blog. Suffice it to say that our server tried to talk Nancy out of her choice, probably because she thought it wouldn't appeal to an American palate. Little did she know the palates she had sitting at her table today were those of a very seasoned and well-traveled (in Nancy's case, literally) pair.

Even though both of us left Ha Ahn completely full and with leftover boxes in tow, I know that we would have loved to try even more flavors today had we been given the chance. I suppose it is just another reason to grab five or six of your closest friends and head out to this remarkable little gem of a restaurant. If you want to satisfy a Korean craving or just want to learn more about the flavors from this part of the world, Ha Ahn is highly recommended. Just remember not to go on Sunday: the restaurant is open every day of the week except Sunday.