Who serves a big spread of great banchan for a party of two or three?
Genwa
soban, usually.
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Jang Ga Ne
Some of these places don’t really deserve their own thread I guess so I’ll just keep adding here.
This one comes via whoever marksinla is. I joyfully follow his IG steps and am seldom disappointed.
Though he got the sam gye tang which i thought was the weakest of 3 things we got, i’d rather go to an SGT specialist.
But, their beef and cabbage lunch stew was quite delicious. beefy with tons of good fermented bean paste flavor in the broth and loads of yummy green cabbage over ‘brown’ rice. Pretty good standard banchan.
The big star though is this whimsical thing called spicy ground mudfish soup! They have whole mudfish too but I liked the sound of grounded more. Fantastic taste, heat level, everything. A craveworthy one for me. You add chopped jalepeno, crushed garlic and their flat mild green onion to the top and just cant get enough of it.
If getting multiple things don’t start with it and blow out your palate 
LA Number 1 Chueotang
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What place is that?
Oops!
LA Number 1 Chueotang
Now I have to find out which tang is in their name
Chueotang is the name of the mudfish soup. I saw this place in passing a few weeks ago while visiting. I had forgotten about my experience with chueotang in Korea about twenty years ago. My mom and I were somewhere in Cheolla Do traveling and there was a show on TV about chueotang. They kept showing how it was made, which was by piling the live mudfish whole and writhing into a big meat grinder/food mill device and processing them into a paste for the soup. Again while still alive. It was a little unpleasant to watch but I was curious. Next morning we noticed that chueotang was on the hotel menu for breakfast. I ordered it and my mom got…something else. As I ate I realized that while I was enjoying the taste of the soup, I couldn’t get the image shown repeatedly the night before on TV of writhing whole ugly fish being ground up alive, and it must have showed because my mother took my soup and gave me hers instead. Now I can’t remember what it tasted like, but I’m far less squeamish about food than I was back then. I’m curious about this place for future trips to LA. Anyone else had this or had experience with chueotang?
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This may be obvious to others but does mudfish have a muddy taste like some other mud dwelling fish?
If you didn’t know anything about how the dish was prepared, I don’t think most people would have a problem with the taste.
My favorite is at Nam Won Gol.
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the dish was definitely murky but super delicious in an earthy, herbaceous way
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preparation really doesn’t bother me… and i think they’re cute
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Thanks for the info I guess I will have to try myself sometime!
Yeah preparation isn’t a thing for me for most species of animals either.
if we’re ok with ortolan… with sushi dudes inserting wires into spinal cords… suckling lambs pigs and goats… knifes in live lobster’s backs… crabs jumping into boiling pots…
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Yeah I think that definitely is a moving target; everyone has their own tolerance levels and value systems for such things.
I personally find the dolphin killing done by some japanese fisherman to be too much for me but am pretty ok with most types of animal preparation.
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Yea i haven’t been the same since that doc.
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Who here has tried ortolan? And most importantly, did you use a veil?!
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Is it City of Gold where Jonathan Gold goes to a restaurant in Manhattan and gets a whole mudfish, which he doesn’t really make any effort to sell his dining companion on?
wait, where can i watch city of gold?
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They didn’t even serve ortolan at Chef Christophe Eme’s old restaurant named Ortolan (RIP), lol.
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