Pocha 32

A few weeks ago, Joe and I were talking about getting together for dinner. Joe’s and his girlfriend, Jane, recently moved from Gramercy to Murray Hill and I hadn’t met her yet so we decided to get together for dinner at Pocha 32. Since we are both walking distance from Koreatown, we decided to meet there and ended up going to Pocha 32, somewhere I’ve only been after a few drinks earlier in the evening. Their food is actually very good (although very salty) and they also have really good watermelon soju.

We started off by sharing the watermelon soju:

Soju is mixed with sprite and fresh watermelon juice and then place in half of an empty watermelon. They ladle it out into bowls so when you’re drinking it, it’s almost like you’re drinking a gazpacho. It’s pretty sweet but you don’t taste any of the soju until it hits you all at once.

For dinner, we shared the squid that was stuffed with pork. They bring it to the table still intact and cut it up into slices for you at the table with a very sharp knife:

The finished result:

It is a really large bite of food but you want to get as much squid and pork into your mouth in one bite as possible to get all of the good flavors and textures. It’s slightly spicy (it’s cooked with lots of gochujang, which is the traditional Korean red sauce that’s the base for everything) and then the pork is cooked until it falls apart easily. It’s really quite good and hits the spot when you’re craving Korean food.

I definitely want to return to Pocha 32 again and I’m already thinking about the squid stuffed with pork!