Sort of Korean-Japanese fusion. Small space at College and Claremont. Forgot my phone so no photos.
Nappa salad: really good, particularly the crunchy burdock chips.
Tomato salad: ditto. Some other crunchy bits.
Onigiri with beef tartare: nice few bites. Deep-fried for a chewy-crunchy nurungji texture on the outside.
Fried chicken: good, simple, great potato salad.
Oxtail jigae with koshikari rice: excellent. Deep, complex broth.
Galbi ssam: ditto. Perfectly cooked beef. Wraps included gorgeous perilla.
Devil’s food cake with sesame cream: fabulous. Not like anything I’ve had before. Fine crumb topping the texture of granulated sugar, no idea what technique is going on there. Couldn’t taste the sesame, didn’t care.
Melon granita with chunks of melon: really refreshing and light conclusion. Too bad there’s nothing like Weiser up here.
Most exciting new East Bay restaurant in a while. First-rate service, more staff than I’d expect for the number of covers. Reservations essential.
also went a month ago - i found it interesting, but also that the majority of the dishes were too restrained in various ways. (also a problem for many of the sandwiches at ok’s deli, excepting the sisig) e.g. the jigae was not piping hot and the ssam felt a little precious in terms of how it ate and the proportion of meat to everything else.. agree the devil’s food cake was very outstanding
The jigae was scalding hot when it came out. Ssam was a modest serving but all the components seemed in proportion. This Yelp photo looks pretty much like what we had.
All the apps, the ssam, and the chocolate cake. Hwe was fine but a bit on the salty side, trout was decent but merely that. Melon desert was good but I’m not really a melon guy.
Really loved the beans. Kakuni was maybe the best I’ve had; they went pretty easy on the sugar (thankfully) and managed to get it extremely tender without leaving enormous blobs of fat on it. Chocolate cake was magical.
