Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong

This Koreatown restaurant recently opened and has been super difficult to get into because it’s so popular. Erika and I managed to put our names in and get a table relatively quickly (a 45 minute wait, which apparently is much quicker than the usual 1.5 hours). The restaurant was first started in Korea by a wrestler/game show host/comedian and brought to the US – first in LA and now in New York. Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong is so popular because it’s known for Korean comfort food and meant to be enjoyed in a communal setting.

Erika and I decided to order the meat sampler and the lunch box. It was a lot of food but Erika had been to the LA restaurant and said we could handle that amount of food. They start by pouring eggs into one of the compartments on your grill table and placing corn and cheese on another. There’s also a “salad” of shaved green onions and the red Korean sauce mixed with a vinegar:

And the cheesy corn and egg mixture in separate grill compartments:

The meat that is served is really plentiful (and our friend, Joe, said it’s his favorite Korean restaurant in K-town right now). Here’s what our table looked like once everything arrived:

We definitely over-ordered, especially since the lunchbox still hadn’t arrived until after we had finished almost all of our dinner. The lunchbox is a rice dish with egg and different veggies and sauces that is placed in an old-school lunch container that the waiter shakes vigorously until everything is evenly mixed.

Erika and I really enjoyed our meal there but I thought the meat wasn’t as seasoned as other restaurants on 32nd street. There were a few items that were marinaded but the majority of the meat was on the plain side. After we nearly finished dinner, Joe stopped by and asked if we had ordered any of the marinades and apparently we ordered all wrong! We’ll have to go back (with Ken, too!) so we can try it again.