Readers, take heed. Beef intestine is an over-rated ingredient in Korean stew, if there ever was one. Our latest culinary expedition takes us to the adroitly-named Korean Restaurant, located near the corner of High and Lane, between the T-shirt store and the skateboard shop. While approaching mediocrity in terms of atmosphere and pricing, Korean Restaurant succeeded admirably at serving some of the least appetizing food I’ve ever had. Chinese restaurants would never treat me so badly – I’ll take dog meat, filthy kitchen habits and draconian refill policies over this any day of the week.
Perhaps I was asking for it when I ordered the one thing on the menu advertising gastrointestinal organs. I reasoned, “Hey, it’s probably the small intestine anyway. A little bovine-urine residue never hurt anyone, right?”
Wrong. I can still see the little sections of intestine floating in the orange broth when I close my eyes at night. Overall, the main flavor of beef and intestine stew consisted of the spicy broth, interspersed with the different textures of the various ingredients. Beef intestine is a pale, grayish color. It’s flavorless and rubbery, if not slippery. The rice noodles were the most slippery bastards of them all. The clear noodles look a little too much like parasitic worms, and seem just as adept at wriggling off your spoon. The beef was chewy and difficult to navigate with chopsticks, as were the large chunks of cabbage and carrots.
Speaking of chopsticks, let’s get one thing perfectly clear. Taken within the context of the world’s dining apparati, chopsticks are inferior both due to their limited shoveling potential and steep learning curve. If handed a fork, all explanation one needs is, “The stickin’ end goes in the food.” Knives require similarly short user manuals. Chopsticks, however, take some getting used to. Best as I can tell, one grips the stick with the fist and stabs downward, skewering the food with the narrow end before lifting and ingesting. Set the second stick aside until the first one breaks. Simply put, they were impotent weapons in my fight against food.
The miso soup was a bit more low-key. Tofu, mushrooms and chives floating in a light, buttery broth with nary a giblet in sight. It made for a tasty, if simplistic dish.
The same broth was used in co-Masticator Nishanta’s wonton soup. He writes, “The broth is very nice. I like the chives though I can’t seem to taste the pork. This soup doesn’t need the eggs, though the eggs don’t detract from the dish. Overall it was good, especially on a cold day.”
Nishanta also tried the ox tail and potato soup and writes, “The ever-present butter-broth strikes again. The chives and firm potato slices add a nice texture. Ox tail itself is very hard to eat without a knife and I’m not about to use my hands. These chopsticks just make a bad situation worse. I refuse to believe that my people share a continent with their inventors. That aside, the meat was very fatty and hard to chew. Rice noodles are also hard to chew – I resorted to swallowing them whole.”
Co-Masticator Gabe comments, “The udon soup was fairly tasty, light on meat and veggies but heavy on noodles. Unlike many of the other dishes around the table tonight, udon soup isn’t spicy – which is fine with me.”
A number of others joined in this review and were similarly dissatisfied with a number of other dishes which will go unmentioned due to space constraints.
Seating in Korean Restaurant is limited, though the lackluster dishes do their best to keep crowding to a minimum. Smoking is prohibited, though insipid ’80s Muzak is encouraged.
Entrees range in price from five to seven bucks or so. Interestingly enough, Koreans color-code their dishes to indicate spiciness. The redder, the better – so long as you sport a cast-iron palate. A better use of your money would be to wire it directly into the Masticator’s Booze Fund. Your support during these tense times is always appreciated.
Hank Mylander is a senior from Westerville majoring in Management Information Systems. Any readers with comments or suggestions are encouraged to write him at [email protected].
