Where to Eat Late Night in Korea Town
By Kurt Mirande
BCD Tofu House: From the pictured order selections on the wall (because who wants to look at a menu at 3 a.m.?), to the friendly wait staff that brings out a hot pot of rice from the moment you take your seat, everything about BCD Tofu House screams efficiency. The seafood and dumpling tofu are always fresh and come in huge portions. But if tofu's a little too sophisticated for your palette, than you can't go wrong with the beef rib and fried fish side dishes. BCD Tofu House is open 24 hours.
869 S. Western Ave., 90005; 213-380-3807
Hite Kwang-Jang: Hite Kwang-Jang is one of the few restaurants in the area serving up traditional Korean cuisine well until the early morning. It can get a little crowded late at night, but the fried chicken wings, kimchi with tofu, and seafood pancakes are definitely worth the wait. And in case you want to keep the party going, they also serve Soju and plenty of ice-cold Hite. After all, what better way to attract late night eaters, then by naming your restaurant after a famous Korean beer.
3839 Wilshire Blvd., 90010; 213-384-7999
Café Jack: If you've ever driven down Western, you've seen this large boat docked in the middle of a parking lot. Although Café Jack looks like a leftover movie prop, it's open until 4 a.m. on the weekends and serves sushi, hot wings, even tempura through most of the night. The prices can be a bit steep (expect to pay around seven bucks for a mango iced tea), but when a boat-shaped restaurant is loaded with photos of Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack from Titanic, you pay for the ambiance…
The Loft Café: It's more of a coffee shop than a restaurant, but that's not to see that everything on the menu at The Loft Café isn't outstanding. Try the red bean shaved ice, waffle with chocolate ice cream, or any one of their Sweet Lady Jane cakes – all of which are freshly prepared (unlike Starbucks). And if dessert's not your thing, you can keep it simple with a tuna, ham or turkey sandwich on whole wheat. And did I mention they have all types of coffee drinks, like green tea late, chai tea, even good old-fashioned traditional cups of Joe. You know, just in case you need a late night caffeine boost (and who doesn't nowadays). The Loft is open until 1 a.m. six days a week. It closes at midnight on Sundays.
3882 W. 6th St., 90020; 213-383-3006
El Flamin Taco: It may be a taco truck, but El Flamin Taco is always serving up some of the best Mexican food in Korea Town well into the early morning hours. Whether you go with their tacos, or a burrito, you’re sure not to be disappointed. Both are made on the spot using handmade tortillas and only the freshest ingredients. And if you’re a fan of al pastor tacos, than you’ll want to try El Flamin’s. They come perfectly seasoned and with plenty of fresh salsa, cilantro, and onion. In fact, you may never order carne asada tacos again after eating them. Then again, no one’s going to fault you if you do.
505 S. Vermont Ave., 90020; 213-718-1790
The Find: Curry House CoCo Ichibanya in Torrance
This Japanese import's curry can sting, but it isn't all about the heat.
Vegetable curry with rice (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
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Japanese curry is globalization ladled onto a plate, a dish that seeped into the Japanese cookbook not from curry-rich South Asia but from the United Kingdom. There, of course, curry is part of Britain's adoptive identity, still the culinary Indian jewel in its post-colonial crown. Japanese curry is a peculiar hybrid, relatively mild and as thick as gravy yet as recognizable as any from the subcontinent.
There's comfort in CoCo Ichibanya's convenience. As in Japan, curry here is a fast food, something to be spooned over rice and a crisp chicken cutlet. And though the restaurant is designed for maximum quickness, its efficiency is endearing: Plates of hot curry appear almost before you can set the menu aside, pitchers of water are provided for every party, and a button is embedded in every table to signal your server.
There are some 40 preset plates, the same curry poured over fried pork katsu (cutlet), a vegetable croquette, stewed chicken, tofu and okra, squid, natto (fermented soybeans), eggplant and on and on in endless combinations. CoCo Ichibanya's curry, however, is a singular sauce — other than an adjustable spice level, there is little deviation from the restaurant's main recipe. This is curry at its bare minimum, a smoky mélange of flavors that point back to a healthy helping of curry powder. It's nowhere near as complex or sophisticated as the curries that flavor Thai Town or Little India, nor is it meant to be.
But unlike most Japanese curries, CoCo Ichibanya's can seriously sting. The restaurant's regular curry has a noticeable bite, but step up to the second level of spice and you'll find a couple of beads of sweat on your brow. Each level advances incrementally with a few extra units of heat. It's at the fifth level that things become uncomfortable, the plate before you less a pleasure and increasingly a chore. Your stomach roils, your lips go numb — it's paralyzing. The restaurant reserves spice levels six through 10 for those with truly masochistic constitutions, each of which can be ordered only after you've proved you've finished its predecessor. (You'll be subject to a sincere questioning by a server.)
CoCo Ichibanya isn't only about the burn. The chicken and pork katsu are panko-crusted cutlets fried to a sturdy mahogany. Cubes of tofu take to the curry without hesitation, as do stewed shrimp and clams. The curry-covered gyoza (pan-fried dumplings) won't match those kneaded and stuffed and pinched by hand, but nobody here expects them to. Concern yourself instead with the wealth of extra toppings for the curry: tomato, asparagus, hard-boiled egg, fried squid and sautéed eggplant, which sops up the curry with custodial efficiency.
The restaurant also takes on Indian tradition with its interpretation of keema, a curry consisting here of ground chicken, bell pepper and zucchini. It's about as accurate a rendition as anything at CoCo Ichibanya, where appropriation and reinvention get a Japanese spin.
Curry House CoCo Ichibanya
Location: 2455 Sepulveda Blvd., Suite C, Torrance; (310) 294-5315.
Price: Curries, $2.75 to $9.49; salads, $1.80 to $7; additional toppings and extras, $1.50 to $3.
Details: Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Lot parking. Credit cards accepted.
The discovery of a new dish, wrote Brillat-Savarin, does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star. This week's splash of happiness is the maize cake Bombay Taj as served at Playa, John Sedlar's beachy new small-plates restaurant in the old Grace space on Beverly.
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Are you looking for dan dan mian? Because everybody knows where to get the best dan dan mian — or at least they did until Chuan Yu Noodle Town, the tiny, sticky-table dive that specialized in the stuff, abruptly shut down around the first of the year. Dan dan mian, of course, is on the menu of any restaurant with even vague pretensions toward Sichuan cuisine — a simple, intensely flavored dish of noodles heaped with dried chile, pickled mustard, fried peanuts and a bit of vinegar. There is almost always a handful of crumbled pork in the bowl — it is the soul of the dish — but most places, even the hard-core ones, will leave it out if you ask them to. Sesame paste? Probably, although it is pretty much optional.
Are you looking for dan dan mian? Because everybody knows where to get the best dan dan mian — or at least they did until Chuan Yu Noodle Town, the tiny, sticky-table dive that specialized in the stuff, abruptly shut down around the first of the year. Dan dan mian, of course, is on the menu of any restaurant with even vague pretensions toward Sichuan cuisine — a simple, intensely flavored dish of noodles heaped with dried chile, pickled mustard, fried peanuts and a bit of vinegar. There is almost always a handful of crumbled pork in the bowl — it is the soul of the dish — but most places, even the hard-core ones, will leave it out if you ask them to. Sesame paste? Probably, although it is pretty much optional.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------L.A.'s Best Cocktails
Our 55 favorites and where to find them
We have, I think, nearly come to agreement on what an essential restaurant might be in Los Angeles, a place that may have transcendent food or occupy a niche in the social ecosystem, but explains something to us about ourselves. Our ideas on the subject are firm. The nature of an essential cocktail may be more subjective. To one man we know, 55 essential cocktails means 55 glasses of Chivas, because that's all he'll ever drink. To us, an essential cocktail says something about L.A.
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Sun Ha Jang: Addicted to Quack
Koreatown's pleasure palace of duck
View more photos in Anne Fishbein's slideshow, "Addicted to Quack at Sun Ha Jang, Koreatown's Pleasure Palace of Duck."
When friends talk about the restaurants they miss in Koreatown — the ones that never quite made the transition when the neighborhood changed from a sleepy expat community to the westernmost district of Seoul — the late-night barbecue joints on South Western are mentioned, of course, the places that filled up after the bars closed, and probably Sa Rit Gol, which for 20 years had the most carefully made banchan, small side dishes, in Los Angeles. Others are nostalgic for the big North Korean restaurant, always empty, that seemed to specialize in mushrooms, or the original goat-soup speakeasy down on Pico, or even the big VIP, where Guelaguetza is now, that probably was the first Koreatown buffet with a non-Korean following. I still find myself pining for the short-lived Han River, whose bossam and jokkbal were the most elegant in town.