If you’ve never seen LA’s K’town, here’s a very good photo essay on it at LAist. Good stuff. (HT to reader)
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If you’ve never seen LA’s K’town, here’s a very good photo essay on it at LAist. Good stuff. (HT to reader)
15 Comments
Good photo essay on Koreatown. Ironically, before coming to Korea I lived in K-town for two years. The photos of the buildings bring back a lot of memories for me. Having absolutely no knowledge of anything Korean I never even ventured into a Korean restaurant. It didn’t help that Thai Town was so close. Wish I would have known how good Korean food was back then. I was however a regular at one of the “Boba” tea shops in Koreatown which seemed to have been far more popular there than they are here. Can anybody explain that?
The Latino population has definitely made an impact on the neighborhood and not entirely positive. One of the memories I will always have is of the LAPD helicopters hovering over the neighborhood shining their spot lights while looking for someone. This happened almost weekly. During the time I lived in Koreatown there were also no less than four gang related murders that resulted in large sections of the neighborhood being shut down for hours by the LAPD. Nothing worse than coming home on a Saturday night a little too buzzed up only to find your neighborhood has been invaded by the LAPD. K-town is an interesting part of Los Angeles by day, but not the best place to be sightseeing after dark.
Got a chuckle out of that Korean-language sign for a Vietnamese noodle restaurant in one of the photos. Why eat real Vietnamese food when you can enjoy a K-town version served up by ajumma?
***Correction***
Why eat real Vietnamese food when you can enjoy a K-town version served up by a mexican?
#3 is right. Latinos do a lot of the cooking. They are very talented. They cook Koreanized Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean food very well.
Someone should write about this phenomenon.
#2, maybe because Koreans Koreanized it to suit their taste better.
Mexicans run the major cities of the U.S., including New York City, not just making some food. Mexicans rule.
“#2, maybe because Koreans Koreanized it to suit their taste better.”
Yup, you’re probably right. Korean palates aren’t highly adaptable to foreign cuisines. Even Beijing boasts a couple of Arabic restaurants, but I don’t think Seoul still has one. I remember how excited we expats were when the first Thai restaurant opened in the mid-90s.
Most of the Latinos in Los Angeles’s Koreatown are Central American, not Mexican.
“Even Beijing boasts a couple of Arabic restaurants, but I don’t think Seoul still has one.”
There are plenty in the It’aewon area nowadays, especially near the mosque.
There are getting to be a few Thai restaurants, too. Mostly in the Hongdae and Gangnam (Shinsa, Gangnam) areas.
“There are plenty in the It’aewon area nowadays, especially near the mosque.”
“Plenty”? Really? I googled “Seoul” and “Arabic restaurant” and found a link to one called the Petra Restaurant, which got a nice write-up in the Seoul Selection.
http://www.seoulselection.com/.....l?cid=2393
Nice photo-essay. I want to go home when I see stuff like this. The LAist is a great website. When I miss my hometown it’s a great website to go to. Of course, the danger is I’ll go away more homesick than ever.
Be warned I’ll be blogging this tomorrow (right now it’s time to get back to my dear Harry ;-))
As for Arabic restaurants, Hwarang is correct. There are a fair number now on the hill in Itaewon. There are quite a few Thai restaurants too. Just because it’s not on Google doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist…
#7,
Yep, that’s right, most Latinos in Ktown are either Central American or part of the Indian minority in Mexico, thus do not consider themselves Mexican. A lot of Latinos in this area have started to pick up some Korean and many of them speak it fluently. There is also a sizable Mongolian population in Ktown, most valet parking attendants being Mongolian. Physically, I can’t really tell the difference between Mongolians and Koreans.
“As for Arabic restaurants, Hwarang is correct. There are a fair number now on the hill in Itaewon. There are quite a few Thai restaurants too. Just because it’s not on Google doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist…”
I realize that. I am surprised to see Seoul go from zero to plenty in a matter of a few years. I hope Seoulites are taking full advantage of expanded culinary choices.
Last time I stayed in the “Little Saigon” hotel (Best Western? in Garden Grove), it turned out to be owned by Koreans, though there was still a Vietnamese restaurant on the premises. All the signs in the surrounding neighborhood were in Hangul, though the old Vietnamese flag could be seen flying from a distant building housing “Radio Free Vietnam”. Music in the karaoke was strictly Korean, and Hite beer and soju was available. Nice people, they even gave me a discount for ordering the maekju in Korean.
Wangkon. Racially speaking, Indians are the vast majority in Mexico. It’s just that people who use Spanish as their primary language are not counted as “Indian”. The general rule for Latin America is: If your primary language is indigenous, you practice an indigenous form of Roman Catholicism (being replaced by Evangelical protestantism), and live within an indigenous community, you are an “Indian”. Otherwise, you are regarded as a Mestizo. Mexico does have some minority groups, to include Blacks. They even have a small band of Black Seminoles. In Mexico, you will generally not be able to spot the men, as they wear the same clothes as everyone else, but the women usually wear their hair in two long braids, which are intertwined at the bottom. Indians in the north of Mexico are racially and culturally distinct from the far more populous south. One group of “Mexican” Indians (the Tarascans of Michoacan) is believed to be related to the Indians of Northern Peru, as they were practicing metal working when the Spanish arrived and spoke a language unrelated to other mesoamerican languages.
Mexico city, by the way, also has a small Korea town, but it is virtually invisible. In 1997 it was estimated at 8,000 persons (in a city of 24 million).
That “photo essay” isn’t worth the title. More of a “snapshot essay”–not a single level horizon! Ok, I’m picky.
I understand that the biggest Koreatown in Latin America is in San Paulo, Brazil. Talked to a friend who went there and he thought it was almost as large as LA’s Koreatown. Has anyone else been there?