Han Bat Sul Lung Tang

Ever since I watched kdrama Shining Inheritance a few years ago, I've been curious about seolleongtang, that whitish broth of beef and beef bones. For whatever reason I could not imagine its taste. Rather silly on my part... but then maybe not. My brother had tasted it before and he reported that it did not taste like much.

Fast forward to the present and I finally decided to give it a try (hey, there's a lot of food to try in LA and I don't eat out that often). I managed to convince two friends to come with me to Han Bat Sul Lung Tang. We were all a bit surprised that there wasn't much to the menu; we should have guessed from the restaurant's name.

I know I really really wanted to like it because upon my first sip I was somewhat disappointed that it was so light tasting. I imagined that it would rich and full tasting because of the beef and bone combo. I'm pretty sure my friends thought the same. We sat there silently sipping our broth and adding the radish kimchi and the radish kimchi juice. And then the beefy taste gradually grew stronger on our tongues. The more we drank, the better it tasted. I stopped relying on the kimchi juice. Towards the bottom of the bowl, I was getting full, but I wanted to keep going. You can get a beefy tasting broth just by boiling ground beef, but it is one dimensional and lacks delicacy, whereas seolleongtang has a hidden depth patiently waiting to be discovered.

Gardena Ramen

I heard about this place years ago when I first became interested in ramen, but I didn't get a chance to try it until today. The ramen is perhaps the most soothing bowl I've had in a while. It's not as fancy as something like Santouka or Daikokuya, two places which definitely turned up the notch in ramen dining in SoCal and laid the foundations for newer establishments with richer broth like Yamadaya, Mottainai, and so on. The broth is lighter, barely touched by the fragrant oil on the surface. The noodles are on the thicker and chewier side and the pile in the bowl is generous. There is almost a homemade quality to this bowl with the cold half of a boiled egg and thick strips of bamboo (canned?), but better. It makes those other places seem incredibly trendy and commercial (yes, even though Santouka appears in the Mitsuwa food court). It's like a fight for whoever has the most kotteri broth. That's not the only kind of ramen out there. Gardena Ramen? It's all old-school SoCal.