Grill You Know It's True, Oo, Oo, Oo, I Love You

Sorry I have been so quiet lately. . . I have been a little too addicted to the NBA Playoffs this month. But it is almost over!

However, my lack of recent posts mean that there is a huge backlog of photos and half-written posts, languishing in Blogger, and not yet ready to be finalized and published.

You can imagine my delight when a fellow food blogging friend, Eat, Drink, and Be Merry posted about a place I've been meaning to post about for over seven months: Shik Do Rak. (I've heard that Shik Do Rak means something like "the hungry esophagus" in Korean. (But don't blindly trust my translation, because I heard it from a Caucasian guy!)

Now that Eat, Drink, and Be Merry posted about this Korean Barbecue restaurant in Los Angeles' Koreatown, I thought I'd piggy-back on his post, by posting a few pictures and encouraging you to try this tasty Los Angeles-area eatery where you can chargrill your own red meat, onions, and halved button mushrooms on a circular Korean-style grill.

If you've never been to have Korean barbecue before, it entails a lot of cooking on your end. Your server will bring you out a tray of various marinated or non-marinated red meats, and you may grill them on your sizzling table grill to your liking. Remember, when manning the grill, be sure to move the cooked pieces of meat to a specified, cooler area of the grill (and away from the uncooked meat) to prevent cross-contamination.

Just as Eat, Drink, and Be Merry suggests in his post, Shik Do Rak offers thin, flat sheets of rice paper noodle that you use to wrap the grilled meat and leafy greens before chowing down.

Also, use the flavored oils and hot chili sauce to taste.

As you eat your rice paper wraps, don't forget to eat your fill of their selection of pickled, salted, and fermented vegetables, called panchan. For those of you who are unfamiliar with panchan, it generally consists of such items as pickled bean sprouts, cucumbers, seaweed, and fermented napa cabbage (kimchee). Panchan has an acerbic crunch and a pleasant vinegary bitterness. I call them "chopstick foods"--as opposed to "finger foods"--because the elements are easily pinched between the tapered ends of a pair of lengthened and slender chopsticks.

And, Shik Do Rak also offers a satisfying spicy tofu soup to close your barbecued meal. The soup is made with clams and red Korean chili pepper powder, and is called soondubu.

I hope this brief post gave you a nice orientation on Korean barbecue (if you were previously unacquainted with it)! Korean barbecue is very fun: it is as elaborate as a Broadway production because it comes replete with 1) sizzling, spitting, and glowing grill grates and 2) smoke which continuously emanates from the grill. Best of all, Korean barbecue restaurants are great places to take a large group of friends, especially friends who are collaborative, ambitious people who take charge at social events--or if those friends merely like to barbecue meat!