By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
Well, folks, this is your chance to actually be, like, productive and stuff. I am authorized to write the following: “A journalist author is looking for the best Chinese restaurants in the world, and is looking for candidates from Korea.”
Make of that what you will. The “journalist author” will probably be looking at the comments for this post, so they will be able to use any and all advice you may be able to provide on the subject. Please provide the 5W’s & H regarding the establishment you feel is up to snuff. Thank you.
36 Comments
There is a restaurant in Incheon called “Yeow Ding Bat Phai” that serves the best jjajangmyun this side of, um, well Seoul.
If the reporter is looking for the best Chinese restaurants in the world, they can give Korea a miss. “The best jjajangmyun this side of Seoul” ain’t sayin’ much. Seriously. An acquaintance took me to a well-known, expensive Chinese restaurant near Hongdae with dishes in the 5-digits. The food was no better than the basic dishes I ate at ordinary restaurants in China, but it was better than the phony Koreanized stuff at “junghwa yori” places.
I’d order takeout from the Shandong or Liaodong peninsulas, both less than an hour airtime from Inchon Airport.
The best ox-tail soup I have ever had was at a Korean restaurant in Los Angeles, and the best bulgogi I have ever had was at the ASA Club on Camp Humphreys, the US Army base near Pyeongtaek.
I have never been impressed with the food at any Chinese restaurant in Korea, even the supposedly fancy ones. As far as I am concerned, Chinese restaurants in Korea are like fast food restaurants in the United States, except the food is not as good. By the way, why don’t Koreans like Taco Bell?
Bevers,
You were in Korea when Taco Bell enjoyed a brief stay in the hotspot neighborhood near Kangnam, weren’t you?
I might have to agree with Sonagi. I don’t think there is anything here that is superlative, considering that China is so close. I would go to Hong Kong for such.
I could only recommend a new, decent one that seems to focus on getting the details right and might be one of the better ones. The decor is better than most at least. I would have to return and try all the other dishes to be certain:
Kuai 19 (on Ka-ro-su Road)
Kangnam Gu, Shinsa Dong 545-19
02.511.8119
If he were looking for the best fresh roasted coffee in Korea, I could easily help for there is only one and it is not *bucks.
Honestly, there are no good Chinese restaurants in Korea. I’ve been to several fancy ones in Seoul, Taegu and Pusan and all had poor quality meals and were ridiculously expensive. I’ve been to several of the hole-in-the-wall places frequented by Chinese nationals working in factories in Taegu and Kumi and they didn’t offer much more than udong and pickled radish. In fact, there are really no good foreign food restaurants that I’ve ever seen in Korea and I’ve lived here for 10 years. Unless you consider Outback or Fridays to be good food. Sorry, the Nashville Club in Itaewon doesn’t count as they get most of their stuff from the Yongsan commissary and they aren’t very good anyway. Korea may have the worst culinary choices for a large city in the world. You’d think that being so close to Japan and China that you could find something even half-decent, but that’s not the case.
For your artice though…the best Chinese food in Korea is the American owned franchise Shanghai Express. There are 3 branches in Taegu. I’m not sure if there are any in Seoul yet. BTW, jjajangmyun is not Chinese food. At least the Chinese people I know don’t consider it to be.
Sonagi,
Yes, I was here when Taco Bell was here, and I used to take the bus over there almost every Sunday for lunch. However, for some reason that I cannot remember, there was something about it that I did not like. Maybe, they were stingy with the meat or beans or someting. Anyway, it did satisfy my craving.
There’s a very nice “Hong Kong” or “Shanghai” style place (so they claim) just north of where the Central Post Office is being built. This is the Myongdong area, close to the “Chinatown” there. I don’t remember the name, but I can find out.
It is not typical Korean fare at all.
In the Seoul Finance Center B1 floor (?) there is a nice Chinese restaurant. I don’t remember the name of that one either, but I think it might start with an X.
I’ve only eaten at a couple of Chinese restaurants in the Daegu area, and they were nothing special. I’ve read that the best Chinese restaurants are supposed to be Incheon’s Chinatown—and I’ve visited the area—but I didn’t actually visit any of the restaurants there.
From what I understand, the Chinese cuisine served in South Korea is supposed to be Northern Chinese, which is where jajjangmyeon/chatchangmyŏn/etc. is supposed to have come from. I can’t vouch for that firsthand (never having visited China), but it is no less authentically Chinese than the Cantonese-influenced but heavily North Americanized stuff one gets in many North American Chinese restaurants. The good, presumably authentic stuff on this side of the Pacific is to be found in restaurants that cater to recent immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc.
If this is a book of the best Chinese restaurants in the world bar none, I can’t say if there’s anything superlative in Korea or not. But if the author is looking for the best restaurants in each country, then I suppose some of the suggestions made by others above are worth looking into.
Let me suggest you try the Chinese association >> http://www.crask.or.kr/ Sometimes they’re helpful.
IMHO, the best places are either best for certain dishes or certain occasions.
There’s a place on Namsan that every Chinese family in Seoul uses for wedding banquets. Great place, just don’t dare show up and ask for just jajjangmyeon.
There’s a dumpling house in Myeongdong that’s been there and in the same family since the 1920s. Good stuff, but just dumplings. (Not even jajjangmyeon.)
Gerry, I think Koreans don’t like Taco Bell, because the refried beans don’t sit well with their digestive systems. If Taco Bell, somehow found a good substitute for it, I think they’ll do very well. My gut adjusted to the refried beans. I enjoy it, but many Koreans who come to America and try it don’t like it.
Maekchu,
Ordinary Chinese restaurants in northern China (including Beijing) do serve “zhajiangmian,” a bowl of noodles topped with a thick medium brown sauce made from real fermented beans and sometimes minced carrots and celery. It is delicious.
Are the Northern Chinese food as drenched in oil as what we get in North America? (Catonese/southern Chinese)
I used to love Chinese food and always thought they were healthy food, until someone told me how much fat and calories a North American style sweet and sour chicken balls contain. It makes McDonalds look like a lean cuisine. What makes people crave Chinese food is the amount of addictive fatning stuff that goes into the food - namely oil (just as we enjoy french fries fried in oil). If the Chinese people really eat like this, how is it possible that they don’t have the same overweight problems like the North Americans?
Chinese food is oilier than Korean food because the Chinese prefer stirfrying veggies and proteins in vegetable oil rather than pickling or blanching and seasoning with sesame oil.
I think Chinese people are thinner because they are more physically active (most Chinese don’t own a car), eat less, and cook satisfying meals with fresh ingredients rather than tossing a plastic dish in the microwave.
I thought they were all the same.
I was down in Yeongtong-dong in Suwon a couple of months ago and ate at a pretty good Chinese restaurant down there. It was only about 10,000 a plate and was very tasty. Now that I think of it, the name escapes me.
Now that is stretching credulity very thin . . . that is a bit like saying Outback is a great Australian restaurant.
You obviously haven’t tried Outback’s awesome vegemite set.
Vegemite!?—yeccch!
Tried it once. Never again. (On a trip to the UK, where I was also inducted into the mysteries of pureed green peas. Looked just like wasabi, except it had no taste, let alone being spicy.)
Oh come, come, certainly there is much more that vegemite to go crazy about. What about sweetbread? or some of the other British delecacies?
I hear that the Ansan area has more Chinese than you can shake a stick at and while I cannot guarantee the quality of any of the eating establishments in the area, I suspect it is just like Mexican food; where there are Mexicans that have recently imigrated, you will also be able to find good (or at least authentic) Mexican food.
I like a place called Din-Tai-Fung. It is located in Myeong-dong, adjacent from the Bank of Korea. I believe that it is primarily Taiwanese style, but has dishes from other regions as well. Definitely quite different from what the typical Korean-style Chinese restaurants are serving, and worth the wait that the place usually has.
See link: http://www.dintaifung.co.kr/
As far as Chinese food is concern, please do not forget the best chinese food in the world, Wei Sek Kai(hungry street) over at SS2, in PJ, Malaysia.
” . . . the best Chinese food in Korea is the American owned franchise Shanghai Express.
Now that is stretching credulity very thin . . . that is a bit like saying Outback is a great Australian restaurant.”
R. Elgin…you missed the point entirely. I’m not saying Shanghai Express is great Chinese food. It’s not. But it is the best Chinese food I’ve found in Korea which, admittedly is a sad state of affairs on the culinary choices found in Korea.
I wouldn’t say Outback is great Australian cuisine either but you’ll have to admit it is the best Austrailian food in Korea.
My point is the (non-Korean) food here sucks and the best foreign food restaurants are less than stellar.
> My point is the (non-Korean) food here sucks and the best foreign food restaurants are less than stellar.
Even the Korean food is better outside of Korea.
Having eaten in some a pretty wide spectrum of Korean restaurants both inside and outside of Korea, I’d have to disagree with TheBDF’s comment. Sure, most restaurants in Korea are nothing special, just hole-in-the-wall places (doesn’t stop me from eating there, though)—but if you go to some of the fancy schmancy places in Kangnam or elsewhere—places that specialize in basically only one or another dish—well, they’re pretty darned good.
Sorry—Gangnam.
Sorry—Gangnam.
Sorry for what? Sorry that an obscure government agency railroaded through a tried-and-failed Romanization scheme that cost tens of millions of dollars to implement and that forces people to routinely mispronounce words, all the while threatening supposedly independent corporate and organizational entities with various measures in order to pressure them to adopt it?
Well, if that’s what you meant, then I’m sorry, too.
Some of the best restaurants in Korea are the unpretentious ones in the countryside, where the food is fresh and seasonal. There are really great raw fish (hoi, sashimi) places on the coast, and one of the best things about them is their low cost.
Chinese food here blows in comparison to L.A. or NYC. There’s no good, cheap, all-around Chinese restaurants. Also, for all the gochujang people dump in Korean food, you would think there would be a decent Szechuan restaurant here, but I have not found one. Oh wait, Szechuan is actually very spicy, not pretend-spicy, that’s why
“Sorry—Gangnam”
Ya know, I was thinking of adding a disclaimer just for your sake, Kushibo
, but decided against it at the last minute.
There are really great raw fish (hoi, sashimi) places on the coast.
If fresh and cheap sashimi is what you desire, Yeosu is the place to be. You should visit the strip of hoi restaurants in Soho-dong when on a date or the little hole-in-the-wall restaurants near the fish market in the old downtown if you’re with friends.
michael wrote:
Very true. One of the best meals I’ve had in my life was some 산채 비빔밥 in a restaurant in Juwangsan, Gyeongsangbuk-do. The veggies were unbelievably fresh. And I haven’t been to any really fancy-schmancy restaurants…just the average but decent ones that cater to families going out for dinner.
I’d say if anything, Korean restaurants outside of Korea are generally not as good as those inside Korea. I suspect a lot of people who start up Korean restaurants abroad were not in the restaurant business in Korea, and are counting on the fact that Korean- and non-Korean customers alike are a captive market, faced with a limited choice of places to eat Korean food.
There are also a couple of places in Gyeongju (a city but just barely—more of a large country town) that serve great 쌈.
Shelton, what is the scope of this project? Is the author looking for the best Chinese restaurants (say, the top thousand) around the world? Or is he or she looking to write up the best restaurants in each country? Will they be covering the whole gamut of styles—Beijing, Cantonese, Szechuan, etc., etc., etc.—and the out-of-China variants—e.g., North American or Korean-style Chinese cuisine?
(I’ll understand if these questions go unanswered…if it’s a work in progress, the author might not want to divulge too much. But at any rate, these are some issues for the writer to consider….)
Well, there’s always Ho Lee Chow for greasy American-style Chinese food. But I can’t say that the food is either outstanding or value priced.
Perhaps my taste buds are not as refined as the previous bloggers. Or has Korea had a food revolution in the past two years? I have been in Korea 8months now and I have tasted some of the best food of different nationalities, ever. There is a wonderful Chinese/Korean restaurant in Pyongteak just under the main walk-over bridge and a great Indian spot also a street over btw. In Apujeong a place called Dim Sum reminded me of home with their tangy yet spicy Hot & Sour soup…their Chinese type kim che was the best kim che I ever tasted. I dont know many fancy words for describing food but I know what I like and I think Koreans know too! signed A GI Touring Korea With Her Taste Buds