Not Fearing the End of the World at Keungama

I was nearing the end of one of the busiest weeks in Scoops Westside's short six-month history and Josh was savoring the end of one chapter in his professional career while looking forward to the next. The world was supposed to end at midnight. It took a late-night dinner at Keungama, one of the old-school joints in Koreatown that's neither flashy nor refurbished for the modern era. Instead it's a microcosm of what makes eating Korean food great. For decor you get a bit of a dingy room with bright fluorescent lights whose lumens you need to stay alert this late into the evening. The encompassed room allows barely any of the outside world to peer in, so you feel instantly transformed into some side street in Insadong or Hongdae instead of a thin stretch of 8th Street in Koreatown.

The menu here is also your placemat, and prices aren't artificially low to attract new clientele. There are a slew of dishes that get up to $30, mostly because they're huge stews that are cooked tableside and shared amongst a family of four. The real specialty here is the thick, cloudy bowl of suhl lung tang, a comforting soup of bone marrow and variety meats that one could misplace as bleachy dishwater. When it isn't well made, that's certainly one description. But for a dish that I've been eating longer than my memory goes back, it's so much more than meets the eye. This is how I eat suhl lung tang: First taste a bit of soup to see how much salt you're going to need. It's generally a bit bland so take a small bit of sea salt on the table and season to taste, but a little less than what you might want because you're going to be adding more seasoning. I also add a dash of black (or white) pepper for good measure. Then you sprinkle in some fresh-cut scallions/green onions to add another layer of flavor. My parents just let it rain but I'm a little more conservative with the scallions.

I like to take out all the meat before I start eating and replace it when a tad bit of rice. Don't add all the rice at once! I've had more than a few ajimmas (Korean women) tell me not to do this. I don't know if it's bad luck or bad matters or just bad form, but I agree with them - you want some of the rice to soak up the broth, but you don't want it to dominate every bite. Good suhl lung tang joints offer noodles, either in white thin strands that swell up or translucent potato vermicelli noodles.

And of course the best places have two bowls of un-cut kimchi, the napa cabbage and daikon radish varities. You're supposed to get these at the table to your own size and enjoyment. Take the daikon radishes and throw a couple lumps into your soup to let the seasoning drift into broth, tinting it a slight ruddy blush. Then take the pieces of meat you've temporary discarded and eat along with the napa cabbage kimchi, followed by spoonfuls of soup.

I didn't eat the aforementioned dish here (though I did taste some of the broth). I had the kimchi pork neck stew, which might be one of the best I've had since my days in Korea back in late 2009. The broth is dense, almost goupy with flavor and the meat trimmings along the hulking pieces of bone make for a fine late night supper.

"When are we going to Korea?" Josh asks, as he normally does every few months. I know a lot of my friends that I would like to take to Korea. Sometimes I feel like I don't need to when we go to places like Keungama, but then again, it only gets better when you're in Seoul.