Taylor's Steak House -- What Amurrcans Do In Koreatown

Taylor's Steakhouse

3361 W 8th St Los Angeles, CA 90005 (213) 382-8449 Google Map 901 Foothill Blvd La Cañada/Flintridge, CA 91011 (818) 790-7668 Google Map

I think the best food to be had anywhere in the world right now is in our very own Koreatown. But not everyone can eat kimchee, tofu, pork belly and the like. Check that -- most everyone can, but will they?

For those of you who are squeamish about internal organs or have bad memories of Korean food from the war or too many M*A*S*H reruns, there is an oasis for you in Koreatown: Taylor's Steakhouse. It's a piece of perfectly preserved midcentury nostalgia food that'll take you right back to the Eisenhower administration when we were fighting Koreans on the battlefield, not the golf course, and we'd only eat their food if we were caught behind enemy lines with Hot Lips but no hot dogs.

Here's the dish...

Smack in the heart of Koreatown, surrounded by tofu joints, BBQ houses, noodle shops, and spas staffed by Korean lesbians in black lace undies (or so Sa tells me -- I sadly have yet to experience this first hand) is Taylor's. Founded in 1953 as "Taylor's Tavern," the operation moved to its present location on 8th Street near Western in 1970. And while the Caucasian population of the 'hood has since moved out to the suburbs, and the Latinos have vacated to wherever they vacate to, Taylor's remains, unchanged. It's classic steakhouse food: shrimp cocktails, Caesar Salads, and steaks of various cuts and sizes. Period. I think there's a fish on the menu somewhere but why bother? (This is not vegetarian-friendly food.)

Taylor's "world famous" item is their "culotte" cut, described as "the tenderest portion of the sirloin -- only two cuts per steer!" Sa imagined that they just take those cuts, and throw the rest of the cow away. How very 1950's. The full sized, 16-oz. $26.95 culotte is big, thick, and juicy, perfect for those (like me) who find filet mignon too flavorless, and like their meat to fight back a little bit, but have been burned once too often by leathery sirloin. If you're not the type to drive home in the big fin Caddy with white sidewalls to Jane Wyatt and the kids, you can get a more 21st-century sized "dinner" cut of the culotte for $19.95, including your choice of potato. Awesome deal. The house "Molly Salad" that comes with full dinners is a half-iceberg head, quartered and drenched in delicious blue cheese dressing with diced tomatoes -- a great version of a classic dish. The steak fries are underwhelming; get the baked potato, which is worth the price of admission by itself. It's got a toothsome, been-cooking-all-day skin, and it's like buttah inside... literally, if you're as liberal with the butter as I am.

The decor is just the way I like my steakhouses: all red vinyl booths and dark paneled walls adorned with bad seascapes and photos of sports stars, crooners, and regulars. Those guys sitting at the table next to you wearing big glasses and talking point spreads look and sound like Mafia, but they're actually former USC head football coach John McKay and buddies... identified by Sa from his picture in the foyer. The waitresses are all "honey" and "sweetie." The martinis are great, and retro-old fashioned in size: no birdbaths here. The wine list is smallish but there are some good buys... try the EOS Zinfandel ($24) with your steak.

It may not be the BEST steakhouse in Los Angeles -- the best I've had was probably at Mastro's in Beverly Hills -- but it's superior to places like Musso & Frank or Dan Tana's, and it's unquestionably the best bang for the buck. We're talkin' steak dinner for two with a good bottle of wine and maybe a salad to share for under a hundred bucks. At those prices you can even go when it's not your anniversary, without having to sell your Barbie collection to pay for it.

There's a nearly identical branch of the restaurant in La Cañada/Flintridge, but I recommend Koreatown, because while you're there you can scout out where you want to go for your next Korean meal -- or get that special "spa treatment."

While I Get The Attraction -- Cassell's Burgers

Cassell's Hamburgers
(or, if you read the small sign in the window, "Hambugers")
3266 W 6th St
Los Angeles, CA
(213) 480-8668
Google Maps, Reviews, Info


In case you haven't been paying attention, Cassell's Burgers has consistently rated among the best burger joints in Los Angeles for many, many years; right up there with Apple Pan, Tommy's, the recently departed Mo' Bettah Meaty Meat Burger, and everybody's favorite In 'N' Out. L.A. Food Crazy loves him a good burger, yet I'd never made the pilgrimage to Cassell's, until yesterday.

I have probably made more hamburgers in my life than anyone you know. Not only did I work at Carl's Jr. as a teenager, but I still cook a couple hundred a year, most of them in one day -- I insist on personally grilling the burgers at our annual summer party. So I have opinions about 'em. And my opinions and prejudices very much color my take on Cassell's.

Cassell's has been making burgers since the thirties, and the room, tucked inconspicuously on an entirely nondescript corner in the Koreatown stretch of the Wilshire corridor, has a cool wartime vibe. The burgers are slung cafeteria-style. You grab a tray and order your burger, 1/3 or 2/3 pound, cheese or no. Your burger is cooked to order and the bun toasted in a single proprietary double broiler-device while you stand and read the articles on the wall extolling the virtues of the burger to come.


One lengthy L.A. Times feature posits three varieties of burger-stand burgers: "primo patties," which use high quality beef and usually fried and served with a plain bun to highlight the quality of the patty; mid-level "char-burgers," which are more likely to use flame grilled patties and sesame seed buns; and "grease bombs," where condiments are dominant, the patty merely a protein layer to act as a platter for the other ingredients. Who knew?



Once your burger is plated and delivered, you sidle down the condiment bar. This a truly impressive smorgasbord of burger bits: homemade mayonnaise, ketchupy relish, another spicier relish, hand-leafed lettuce, and most delightfully, beefsteak tomatoes and slices of onion that are uniformly huge and ,in fact, sized exactly to cover the entire beef patty. The resulting burger is an aesthetic delight, a stack that rivals the Capitol Records buildiing for rounded symmetry.




Then why did I find the Cassell's burger, while good, not great?

Part of it is personal taste. Cassell's claims to be a "primo patty" joint. You can even buy their grade A patties by the dozen to take home and cook yourself. But personally I prefer the flavor of a burger with grill marks and a hint of charcoaly char, and a sesame seed bun. And I frankly didn't find Cassell's patty to be that interesting... to my palate, ground beef patties rarely are.

That said, if you believe that a good burger is essentially about the condiments -- a greasebomb fan -- this is the place, because the condiments and your ability to adjust their quantities to taste is fantastic.

Oh, and those fries are terrific!

Beverly Soon Tofu -- Where Tofu Meets Meat

Beverly Soon Tofu
2717 W Olympic Blvd # 108, Los Angeles, CA 90006
Phone: (213) 380-1113
Open 7 days 9:30 am - 10:30 pm.
MC Visa, no Amex.
Beer, sake, and soju.

Click here for Google Map.

Welcome to my first blog entry about killer eats in L.A.

The honor of first review goes to... Beverly Soon Tofu in Koreatown. Why? Because it's currently my favorite place to eat on the planet. Where else does your tofu come with several varieties of grilled flesh? Here's the dish...

It's a tiny place in a strip mall in heart of Koreatown. Maybe 10 tables, of the rustic wood variety. Cardboard boxes containing god knows what (T-shirts? Menus? Kimchee?) teeter in every corner, festooned with rumpled, half-read Korean newspapers. You sit down. The waitress almost immediately deals out a tableful of panchan. That's Korean for whatever goes with rice, but generally means the small plates of side dishes that accompany nearly every Korean meal.

The panchan is the usual stuff: spicy, slightly effervescent kim-chee, pickled turnips, bean sprouts, cool sliced marinated cucumber. But placed directly in front of you is a small oval of tofu that gives a hint of what's to come. It's like eating a cloud. As fluffy and insubstantial as a George Bush policy speech. Closer to mousse or a light custard than the chalky chunks of tofu you get from your local Chineseria. The delicacy all comes from the light ponzu-like sauce and narrow strips of seaweed on top. Hint: eat it with your spoon; going at it with chopsticks is like trying to stab a cloud.




The menu arrives on two tabletop placards, which can be confusing. One card lists the "Soon Tofu" Bowls. Soon Tofu means a bowl of boiling hot tofu stew, with any of a variety of other ingredients. Pick one of the ten combinations offered; a large bowl is $7.85. My fave is the #3 "Kim Chi" (confusing, as there isn't any kim chee in it... but what do you expect from a place called Beverly Tofu that's actually on Olympic?), a combo of beef, pork, oyster, baby clam, and of course, tofu. Choose your spicy level carefully, as the "Spicy" I like might be too intense for wimpy palates. The roiling bowl of tofu is unbelievably delicious. Loads of garlic, tender meat, jalapenos, and ambrosial tofu. Ladle some into your stainless steel bowl of rice, and enjoy. This is plenty of food for lunch.

The second card, labeled "Special Menu," lists combinations of one (slightly smaller) bowl of soon tofu PLUS one of a variety of grilled meats. Spicy chicken, tender beef galbi, bone-in rib-eye, and most notably a whole squid cut with a scissors at your table into tender, spicy ovals. All are grilled fajita-style, with juicy red onions slivers. At $13.90, this is enough food for a big dinner. The best way to go is to go in a group of four, and order four "special" combinations. Each diner picks their own soon tofu bowl, and everyone can share the four different grilled items.

Be sure to wash this all down with plenty of soju, the national drink of Korea. Served chilled in beer-sized bottles and drunk from shot glasses, (pictured above), soju tastes like vodka - good vodka - that's been watered down over ice.

Oh, and don't forget the egg. When your boiling bowl of tofu arrives, the waitress will ask if you'd like a raw egg cracked in the bowl. If you have any love whatsoever of egg, say yes. It cooks in the bowl. If you break it up immediately, it acquires the consistency the egg in Chinese hot and sour soup. But I like to leave it in the bowl and eat around it, basting it occasionally. By the time you're winding up your meal, the egg has been perfectly poached, to a consistency even dreamier than that of the tofu.

If you're like me, you'll be back at Beverly Soon Tofu the very next day -- and several times the first week -- revelling in the joys of tofu and soju.

I'll be covering many more Koreatown joints here. In the meantime, here are a couple of other resources to check out. Jonathan Gold (my favorite food writer)'s Top 40 Koreatown Restaurants and a broadcast of Good Food at KCRW with a discussion of Korean food.

Thanks for reading. Please give me feedback!

The Frog and the Pig - Toad House

Toad House
4503 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90004
(323) 460-7037
Open Daily 7:30am-1am
American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa
Google Local Map

I thought I'd follow up my last post about Noshi Sushi with a breakdown of a spot less than two blocks away, and yet a world apart. Where Noshi is all about slabs of delicately flavored cool fresh, Toad House is all about...

Frogs.

Psych! It's not about frogs. It's about meat. And particularly, pork.

Just another bunker on Beverly Boulevard from the outside, Toad House greets you with happy cartoons of pudgy yellow pigs on the front door. There are a couple of tables inside, but most of the dining area is outside on the covered patio. And with good reason. There's going to be a lot of smoke, and not just from the surly Korean youths puffing away in the corner over big bottles of OB or Hite beer.

Take a seat outside under one of the five or so TV sets suspended over the tables (there's almost one monitor per table). But trust me, you won't be watching TV. The food show is much better.

The waitress sets down menus. No one speaks much English here, so make it easy on yourself. Take a date, and point to the #3 combination, $39.95 for pork belly and beef brisket for two people. All the combinations include beer, wine, or soju. Have you been paying attention to my past posts? If so, you know want the soju.

Then sit back and watch what happens. Nice but harried waitress fires up the convex grill; a smaller version of what you might see at a Mongolian BBQ. She brings out the metal bowls filled with the small side-dishes known as panchan. Be sure to impress your date that you know the word for these dishes. Say it with me: panchan. They're actually not that remarkable here, but the chili sauce bean sprouts are good, and the potato salad is tangy -- why do these Korean places make potato salad, anyway?

Next comes the leek and scallion "pancake." You won't recognize it as a pancake, because it's more like a quiche or a soufflé. It arrives at your table with the eggy concoction still roiling and boiling to a finish. Let it simmer and solidify a little before you dig in. It's sooo light and fluffy; somewhere between meringue, mousse and the fluffiest omelette you've ever had. I'm craving it as I write about it.

Next come the piles of raw pork and beef. The waitress lays it out on the grill for you. It cooks. You watch, waiting. The brisket is the classic Korean bulgogi, thin-sliced and tender. It cooks fast. Start eating it when it looks good. The pork -- if you ordered the #3 -- is pork belly, huge slabs of marbled meat that look like bacon on crack. Let the waitress cook this for you. You'll know when it's done: she comes by with some bad-ass scissors and (this momma's boy loves this part) cuts it into bite-sized chunks for you.


But there's one more trick to Toad House. It's dduk bo sam style. That means that while the meat is cooking, you'll be brought a big pile of shredded lettuce and scallion, a couple of dipping sauces, and a plate filled with something so unfamilar that -- I guarantee -- even after having enlighened yourself by reading this post -- you'll ask, What's that? They're small, square rice-flour cakes, paper thin and slightly stretchy; not unlike the rice paper wrappings on Vietnamese summer rolls.

Just take a piece of this dduk wrapper in one hand, grab a bit of caramelized, grilled meat, dip it in some sauce, and put it in the wrapper. Add a chopstickload of the lettuce and scallion. Wrap it up loosely, and eat in one bite, dim sum style. This, you will discover, is a little big of hog heaven. Don't worry about doing it "wrong." A glance around the table reveals as many techniques for devouring this stuff as there are for eating rice, beans, and guacamole with tortillas.

Just be sure to wash it back with soju. And don't forget to toast the five happily trotting pigs in the poster on the dining room wall.

They gave their bellies for yours.

Red Booths and Raw Fish - Noshi Sushi

Noshi Sushi

4430 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90004
(323) 469-3458

Open 7 days til 9 pm
CASH ONLY

Google Local Info

It's a fucking zillion degrees in L.A. You've already imposed on your friends to swim in their pool twice, you've seen An Inconvenient Truth and every other thing playing at the Arclight. You've cooked out on the Weber until you have hot dogs coming out your ears. You feel like it's actually too damn hot to eat, but you've got to... and you've got escape the heat.

If you're like me, you want raw fish. Cool, fresh, buttery slabs of sushi. And you'd like it somewhere where you can relax and spend a couple of hours, not propped up on a slightly-too-small plastic chair in a spartan Zen room that should be cool but, because of the small space and the track lighting over the sushi bar, is just a little too close for comfort.

You want to go to Noshi Sushi. I think it's the best sushi restaurant in Los Angeles. Sure, there are places in Beverly Hills that do the thousand-dollar slice of fish. And of course there are the splendors of sushi row on Ventura Blvd. Katsu-ya makes delicious dishes in the "Japanese tapas" style -- things like Carpaccio of Yellowtail with Jalapeño, or Spicy Tuna on Crispy Rice Cakes -- as does my new local favorite Shintaro. There's Nozawa with his "Trust Me" special, and his amazing array of tunas and his blue crab rolls. But Nozawa's rice is always a little warm, and authentic or not, I don't want warm rice taking the cool edge off my raw fish on a hot night.

No, those places are great, but when my wife and say "Wanna go for sushi?", we mean Noshi. Why? Big slabs of fresh fish at reasonable prices, consistently amazing hamachi (which is, after all, the best of all possible sushi fish), and the most comfortable dining room of any sushi place in L.A.


It's in what looks like a nuclear fallout shelter on Beverly Blvd., smack in the middle of Koreatown. It's got a huge sushi bar, but it's one of the few sushi joints where I don't usually sit there... because Noshi's got booths. Big ones. Real, honest-to-god, spacious, red naugahyde booths. The place looks like it was probably once a steakhouse, and has the airy, high-ceilinged feel of a Japanese Hamburger Hamlet, without the cheesy decor.


You won't find any fancy, layered, fusion creations here. No specialty rolls. It's stripped down, dude. No fancy "premium cold sake list." They got hot sake, cold sake, and Asahi and Sapporo beer. Small bottles only, no large. No Kirin. Tempura/teriyaki combos and old-school sushi rule the day.

There are a very few specials on the wall. The albacore salad, a mound of crisp cucumber and shredded daikon and carrot with slabs of albacore tuna in a light, tangy dressing, is the perfect starter to beat the heat. After that, you'll recognize the menu from 1980's sushi bars: Tuna, eel, clam, giant clam, octopus, squid, shrimp, and scallop sushi; California rolls; spicy tuna rolls; salmon skin rolls. You can try to ask for your favorite nouvelle sushi option, but if you're going much beyond "Spicy Scallop Hand Roll," expect a blank stare.

But what they do, they do right: big, bold and fresh. My personal favorites are "white fish" (you get halibut unless you specify red snapper, which is usually better) - order it with ponzu sauce. Scallop sushi (ordered with mayo) is never better anywhere than here. And as for the hamachi (yellowtail) sushi... it's simply the most consistently sweet and buttery you'll find. It invokes in this blogger what his wife affectionately calls "hamachi-face" -- that look of utter epicurean delight that makes your face positively melt with joy. Which is much better than having it melt -- like the Nazi dude in Raiders of the Lost Ark -- in the heat outside.

Two tips:

- Arrive early. The restaurant is only open 'til 9:00 pm, and you can have a tough time parking and a long wait in the 7-9 window.

- Bring cash. It's cash only, and they have no ATM. But you don't need to bring too much... unless you eat more than your weight in sushi and drink more than three beers or sakes, you'll have a hard time spending more than $35.00 a person.

Khaaaaan! - Seoul Garden Restaurant

Seoul Garden Restaurant
1833 W Olympic Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90006

(213) 386-8477‎
MC, Visa
Valet Parking in rear. Closed Sunday.

Yelp Info

The hostess slaps a menu on your table, but everything you need to know about Seoul Garden is prominently displayed on a backlit plexiglass menuboard on a wall in the main room. Note the first three dishes: Beef Jingee-skan, Chicken Jingee-skan, Pork Jingee-skan. It took me a bit of Googling, after my first visit there, to figure out that it's Genghis Khan... which is Korean not (curiously) for what the Mongolians call BBQ, but for what the Japanese call shabu-shabu. Go figure.

And by go, I mean go to Seoul Garden to enjoy this utterly pleasurable style of dining. There's other stuff on the menu but (and I always tell you exactly what to order, that's part of the value-added service you get at LA Food Crazy) you're here for the Genghis Khan. Get two orders for 2-3 people, three orders for three hungrier or four people. Beef (a must), chicken or pork according to your pleasure. Order soju. Here's what ensues.

It's a five course meal. The waitress fires up a hotpot filled with water on your table. While it comes to a boil, you are brought the small, refillable dishes of bonchon; Korean appetizers that here include a delicious, tangy pickled turnip and a delicately cooked egg cake.

You nibble on them with you soju. You remembered to order soju, right? Your waitress will also bring small bowls of cabbage soup.

Then comes your Khan. Raw flesh, sliced paper-thin, arranged flat on a giant wheel of a plate. Here's one order of beef and one of chicken:

A giant bowl of shredded cabbage, mushrooms, tofu and fish cake accompanies your Khan.


Your waitress gets you started, scooping a bunch of vegetables and meat into the boiling water.

Quick, take out the beef, it's already medium-rare. Two more seconds, it's well-done. You scoop some veggies and beef into your bowl. It's tender, mild, flavorful; an absurdly simple and unadorned iteration of the meat.


Of course you can adorn it. People ask, "can I add some of the bonchon?" That's like asking whether you should put some of the guacamole or the salsa on your taco. It's a free world, dude. And the best news is, the bonchon are bottomless. Run out of one, they'll bring you more.

You begin to think you'll never get through that giant wheel of meat, you're boiling it and eating it and boiling and eating it, but trust me, it eventually it does all go away. And just when it's almost gone, the last few bits still boiling in the broth, the waitress swings by. She portions the remaining Jingees-kan into your bowls, and drops some udon noodles into your broth, letting them cook for a bit before scooping them in front of you.

Not a lot, mind you... you're full from all the meat... but it's so clean and tasty, cooked in that broth that has been gathering yummy beef chicken and pork flavors, that you can't resist.



And just when you think, no, there couldn't possibly be more, there is. The waitress will have let the water boil down pretty well by now. She arrives with a bowl of rice, an egg, some seaweed, and sesame oil. She adds them expertly to the broth, and whips up a quick a delicious jjuk (porridge) for you. It's delicious as is, but also a perfect base for disposing of any remaining bonchon on the table.


You've drained that last bit of soju, and now comes a metal cup of the refreshingly sweet tea which I believe is called chik cha.

The meal has probably set you back $25 or so. But if you're like me (or my wife Sa, who wants to go here, like, ALL the time) you'll be back soon.

A couple of notes. It can be crowded, take-a-number crowded, at peak hours. And as with most Korean restaurants in Koreatown, you'll have a more pleasant experience if you're not high-maintenance. Pointing at things and asking for more is fine and appreciated. Asking about serving sizes or ingredients explaining your special dietary needs, asking for rice before the porridge section of the meal, etc., will not enhance anyone's evening. And saying kam sa na hamida (Korean for thank you) is always nice.

Besides, any questions that can be answered are right there in backlit plexiglass, down to the instructions for cooking your veggies. So just say "beef jingee-skan and soju," sit back, and let the evening roll.

The Neon Crab — Won Jo Kokerang Agurang

Won Jo Kokerang Agurang

3132 W Olympic Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90006
(323) 766-0007

When you're truly food crazy, every restaurant sign is a siren song. "Here," each one sings to you. "I am the one... the best restaurant in the world that no one else knows about." But in the world of food blogging, there are very few restaurants no one else knows about. No matter how off the beaten track a place may be, I usually a find that a blogger, or Jonathan Gold -- damn you and your lifetime of experience! -- has already written it up. But aside from one reference to "that dancing crab place" on Chowhound LA, I can't find a single review of Won Jo Kokerang Agurang. Perhaps this is because no one has been brave enough to try to write out the name?

Whatever the case, I believe this is an L.A. Food Crazy scoop...

Driving down Olympic Blvd. at night, as we do fairly often, to a Kings game or to Beverly Soon Tofu, one sign calls to me like a spoonful of smack to a junkie. A red, neon crab, its claws flickering in its two neon positions: up, down; up, down; up, down. There's no English on the exterior signage at all. It's one of those inscrutable Koreatown bunkers that line the boulevard, each one sheltering who knows what culinary delights.

Every time we drive by the Neon Crab, the windows are fogged up. If customers enter or exit as we pass, a puff of steam wafts out the door, through which I glimpse a small spare room packed with Koreans. I tell my wife -- like ten times -- "we have to try that place." Finally I talk her in to it. As we approach, I say, "I'm picturing steaming iron bowls of roiling, spicy crab stew, with noodles and legs stickings out all akimbo."

I am almost entirely correct. There are no noodles, but there is rice.

Oh, there is rice.

The room is tiny. Ten or so tables. No one speaks a word of English. This is a good sign. The menu is small, so don't bother picking and choosing, much less asking whether this or that is good, or whether this or that comes with this or that appetizer, or whether the food is too spicy. Your questions will not be understood. Just order the Spicy Crab Soup. This is the steaming bowl of crab in question. Or, if you hate soup, order the Spicy Crab Casserole (pictured). It's identical to the crab soup, with sauce rather than broth.


As I say, there are no noodles. What look like noodles in the photo are bean sprouts. This is excellent news for those of you who, like LA Food Crazy, are low-carbers. It's true -- people ask me, how do you stay so thin when you eat so much food? To which I have three answers: 1. Low carb diet; 2. I actually only post once a month or so, which doesn't require lots of eating' and 3. Do you really think I look thin!? I love you! This means, btw, that whenever I discuss noodles or burritos or french fries here, I have unselfishly broken my diet and researched meals in excess of 20 carb units just the edification of you, my readers.

But I digress. Back to the meal.

There are panchan (the ubiquitous side dishes that are the bread and butter or chips and guacamole of Korean dining) galore: tangy, refreshing cucumber salad, tsukomono-style bean sprouts, tofu, kimchee, pickled turnips, seaweed, and yes that is potato salad with apple chunks.

Then the lady comes with the crab and the scissors. I've decided American waitresses don't use enough scissors. She cuts up the crab like your crazed third grade teacher attacking construction paper, chopping it into manageable pieces. She makes a little plate for you out of one of the crab's shells, and leaves you to it. (She may also try to embarrass you by placing a lobster bib around your neck. Please, for the dignity of all white people in Koreatown, politely decline it.) You go to town on Dungeness crab, the spicy broth, the bean sprouts and greens and onions soaked in spicy crab sauce. It is probably more crab than you can eat. You drink soju. Oh, the price of the crab soup for two ($45, if I recall correctly -- notes are not LA Food Crazy's strong point, he's too excited about the food to write stuff down) includes a beverage. You want soju. God bless soju, and I don't even believe in God.

But the best is yet to come. You say to the waitress while making a stirring motion over the detritus of your soup/casserole, "fried rice, please."

The waitress comes back with a rack of ingredients: some rice, some seaweed, some sesame oil, some spices. She takes a ladleful of your crab soup/casserole, and mixes it up into a risotto that comes out looking like this.


It is, I guarantee you, one of the best things you have ever eaten. Spicy, savory, with a rendered-down crabby essence... you will find yourself getting out of bed at three a.m. for leftovers, because you couldn't possibly finish the rice right after all that crab.

Okay, so the word is out. I suspect the next time I drive by, and that crab blinks at me, and the door opens, and steam wafts out, that I will see one or two of you, trying to talk to the waitress and asking "what's in the "mixed seafood casserole?" and "do you have noodles?" and "Could you make it medium spicy, please? And do you have a wine list?"

Jeesus, did you not read what I just told you? Seven words:

Spicy Crab Soup.
Soju.
Fried rice, please.