The menu calls the dish “Song-Yi Jook | 제철 송이죽” ($52).
In California we usually call them matsutake (which I figure means more to some readers here than song-yi or pine mushroom) even though strictly speaking they’re Tricholoma magnivelare rather than Tricholoma matsutake. To my knowledge the ones available here are all domestic. San Ho Won might have a connection with a local forager, they’re found in the Bay Area. I found one in the Presidio once.
I love Japanese food, but when there’s a domestic ingredient listed in Korean at a Korean restaurant, I wouldn’t resort to calling it by its Japanese name (even moreso as you point out, these may not be matsutakes technically).
Same reason that if the menu listed gingko as eunhaeng-al, I wouldn’t call it ginnan; if it listed gwangeo hwe, I wouldn’t say karei sashimi; if it listed sweet potato as goguma, I wouldn’t call it satsumaimo; and, I wouldn’t or call boricha as mugicha.
I do like that Corey Lee is putting out a glossary to help spread knowledge about Korean ingredients and preparations.
Using a lot of foreign words that are unfamiliar to your audience isn’t great communication unless you define them with their familiar counterparts.
My point was just to alert anyone who didn’t make the connection that San Ho Won currently has matsutake juk, which to me is worth a special trip.
gee i believe it’s a seaweed sauce. worth the journey.
my favorite of the meats. worthy of repetition.
it was actually pretty difficult to eat given how thick it was and only having metal chopsticks and a spoon for utensils. i asked for scissors, which surprisingly they didn’t have, and got a knife instead. after cutting it into manageable pieces to eat with the ssam it was very rich and delicious. the ssamjang and scallion-cilantro sauce are perfect complements for the fattiness.
hi @TheCookie, i didn’t get the individual taste of pine needle, but taking a bite with everything together, the piping hot jook was extremely aromatic, savory and comforting with tender, silky morsels of chicken, earthiness from the pine mushrooms and bites of crunchy water chestnuts. thanks.
so much of Korean food is about stacking and building flavor with taking huge bites of many ingredients together.
the whole menu sounds great, from the banchan (i love white kimchi) to egg souffle and song-yi jook, but at the end of the day when it comes to this KBBQ, i’d probably be a just a predictable beef guy. now if they only offered some dessert of overripe hachiya persimmons and then some sikhye, then it would really be worth the journey.