Pyung Chang Tofu House - 4701 Telegraph Ave - 4.14.08

This place is really popular with the folks on Yelp. We didn't know this before we went - in fact, my Partner in Chow had already decided that there was to be no more Korean food on this journey, period.

However, I had a cold. And the Korean places in Koryo Plaza were an obvious skip, and this wasn't obviously Korean. Tofu could be anything, right?
I didn't realize it was Korean - the last place with Korean writing turned out to be Vietnamese.

And it smelled good from the outside, and there was rock star parking. And my PIC was on the phone and not paying close attention, so I was in and seated with barley tea before either of us realized that it was Korean.

Since the tea was out, we were stuck. And looking around I began to think that this place might actually be good. It was a Monday night, and there was a decent crowd. The sizzling stonewear serving bowls were impressive and so were the rustic, rough-hewn tree-trunk tables. And there was a nice mix of actual Korean people and neighborhood hipsters, leading me to believe that most people had been here before and were returning on purpose. All good signs.

One thing that we have discovered about Korean food: it is awfully difficult to be a vegetarian in a Korean restaurant. Seriously. Most the tofu dishes contained beef or seafood, and the one that didn't contained seaweed. Which isn't meat, but is on the "I hate it" list for PIC. Fortunately, she was able to order that without the seaweed.

I was also happy to find a chicken soup on the menu, since the reason I sat down was the sight of bowls of soupy-looking stuff and I had a nasty cold. It was a whole chicken for the whopping price of $13.99, and it was stuffed with ginseng. This sounded like a good coldbuster.

What we ordered: vegetarian tofu in sizzling pot thing, whole stewed chicken soup, large OB beer (to kill the cold germs)
Service: friendly and relaxed
Atmo: bad lighting, cool tables
Crowd: the neighborhood + local Koreans
Spent: around $30.00 (with tip)
Overall rating: 3.5 sporks

This place has the honor of reversing PIC's "I can't eat Korean food" stance. She really liked her tofu pot, which was brought out in molten bubbling form and didn't contain the hated seaweed. The tofu had great texture, the flavors were good, and nothing tasted fishy.

The little plates of stuff were interesting. We still don't know whether these are meant to be appetizers or condiments, but we tried them all. There was a bizarre parsley and tofu mixture that I for some reason liked, and we both like mung bean sprouts. These ones were a bit too marinated for my taste, but the dogs were thrilled when we brought the leftovers home.

I've recently discovered that these little plates are called banchans. The Kim Chee actually went down as the best Kim Chee we've had, but overall the banchans are better at Sam Won.

My chicken soup was exactly what I needed. Yes, I did have to do a lot of dissection - I loathe chicken skin and obviously one has to remove the bones and weird dark pieces and connective tissue and such. But I had a groovy little discard plate to put all this nonsense and we weren't in a hurry. The chicken was stuffed with rice, and I put extra rice into my soup.

The rice came sizzling in a clay pot and the waitress scooped it out for us. This left a film of charring rice on the sides, and when I made a move to eat it she hurried over and extracted it for me with a knife. (Thank you, nice lady.) In Ecuador, they call this residue "cocolon" and I've always loved it - it kind of tastes like popcorn. Mmm.

So I was perfectly content with three different consistencies of rice, lots of groovy banchans and a bubbling pot of chicken soup that I hoped would make me well. The ginseng tasted like ginseng - kind of mushy and bitter, but not so overwhelming that it ruined the soup. I ate it because I assume it's good for me, since it tastes medicinal. I wouldn't use it as a flavor element, but then again I'm not Korean.

Overall, we enjoyed this place a lot more than we thought we were going to, i.e. as my PIC was making defeated "maybe I'll just get rice" statements.

Oh - unlike every other Korean place we've tried, this place actually has windows. Go figure.

Still not entirely understanding Korean food, it seems that they're pften divided between BBQ places and "food served in a bowl" places. This is one of the "food served in a bowl" places, but unlike Seoul Gum Tang there's a variety of stuff on plates too.

So if you like Korean food, eat here and tell us what you think. It's kind of hard to rate Korean restaurants being that this project is our intro to Korean food, but hey. At least we're not biased.