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.
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