LA’s Koreatown is a place of legend, filled with all-you-can-eat BBQ, karaoke spots, and seedy places you’ll never know about unless you know about them. It also covers the area seemingly as big as Manhattan. New York’s Koreatown, on the other hand, covers just more than a city block and is built vertically like much of the rest of Manhattan. It is there that I went to dinner at Jongro BBQ.

Walking into Jongro is like what I imagine walking into a market in South Korea is like, as the design gives off the impression that you are outside. The surprise for me, however, was the long ventilation tubes hanging from the ceiling over every table. This ensured that the place was well-ventilated and did not have the musk of other Korean BBQ places I have been to. In another strong contrast to LA’s Koreatown, everything seemed shiny and new.

When we were seated, we ordered up some Marinated Kalbi and our waiter set to work. While there was a degree of DIY to this meal, the staff actually took care of almost everything – including retracting the ventilation tube when it was time to eat the meat off of the grate it was cooking on. As for the Kalbi, it was fantastic. Perfectly seasoned, super tender and cooked just right thanks to the waiter.

At the risk of over-comparing, I have to admit that I am spoiled by Korean food in LA. Jongro was great, no doubt, and probably some of the best Korean that New York has to offer. Plus, the meat was on par with some of the better spots I’ve been to. The trouble that it was not all-you-can-eat, which is almost a prerequisite for me and Korean BBQ. And I don’t mean this in terms of gluttony, but just in terms of being able to try more than one or two different things in a meal, because variety is the spice of life (along with gochujang). Regardless, Jongro succeeds in bringing great Korean food to the mean streets of New York, and for that it is to be commended.

All you can eat Korean BBQ is one of the greatest things (not just food things) ever created. It’s meaty, it’s flamey and it is interactive-y. Yet, not all KBBQ spots are created equally, with some charging a bit more than others. Oo Kook in Koreatown is one of those places that goes beyond the $20 mark, but I was hoping it would be worth it.

The menu was full of options ranging from tongue to baby octopus to three different kinds of pork belly. Three! Of course, the classics were there as well, like brisket, short rib and “marinated” thin sliced beef, also known as bulgogi. We did our best to try out every “normal” meat and even threw in tongue for good measure.

By far, the best of all the meats was the Black Angus Beef Marinated Short Rib. And this was not an easy battle to win. After all, Oo Kook’s bulgogi was made with wagyu beef and was probably the best I have ever had. Yet, the nice marbling, perfect marinating and almost melt-in-your-mouthness of the short ribs were too tough to beat. I was also a huge fan of the two types of flavored pork belly – one was miso and the other wine.

On the other end of the spectrum, the tongue was just whatever and the Black Angus Hanging Tender, which was some sort of beef was weirdly tough and just plain lacking in flavor compared to all the delicious possibilities.

While it is a noble thing to try out a number of different meats, if I were to return to Oo Kook I could easily eat four or five only and still leave a very happy man. Oh, and they did serve up a variety of pickles and other mini dishes like the rice wrapper and stuff, but as you might expect I really had no need to mess with them.

It was obvious that Oo Kook’s higher price tag translated to higher quality (plus, the servers are almost always there to help you flip the meat) and I wouldn’t hesitate to make a return visit the next time I’m looking to eat my weight in meat.

After the ill-fated sojourn to Koji BBQ Buffet, I was in need of some good Korean BBQ to wash the bad taste out of my mouth. Fortunately, my friends were more than willing to join me and we ended up at Star BBQ in Koreatown, partly because we had heard great things, but also because it was the easiest place to pronounce. Upon arrival the place was empty, which meant we got personal service that meant not only faster meat, but a waitress to help us with the cooking of it.

Due to some KBBQ rookies with us, we made the common mistake of ordering brisket. Now, before you say anything about how great brisket is, you must realize that Korean BBQ brisket is simply frozen, flavorless beef and a total waste of stomach space at an all-you-can-eat BBQ. It is one level above rice at such a place and is only saved by the fact that it is still meat.

As we switched from brisket to other food items, I have to say I was impressed by Star BBQ’s attention to us and to the detail of our food. We rotated between a meshy grill topper and more of a cast-iron topper and each were different from anything I had ever seen at KBBQ before. The variety was nice and complemented the variety of meats we ordered.

The top two meats were the Beef Short Rib and the Beef Bulgogi, the latter of which should come as no surprise since it is almost always awesome. For some reason we avoided things like the intestine and tongue, although to be honest if there had been someone there willing to eat those with me I would have gone for them.

One thing I found especially fantastic about the place was that they actually had steak on their menu. And no I don’t mean sliced up, marinated steak, I mean big old steakhouse-sized steaks. They were of the ribeye variety and although they couldn’t really compete with the marinated deliciousness of the short rib and bulgogi, they were certainly appreciated.

After eating just about as much as possible, memories of that other KBBQ experience faded from my mind. Once again, Koreatown served me well and I was perfectly content with the impending meat sweats knowing they were well worth it.

Once upon a time, Koreatown boasted an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ joint called Manna and long before I had my own meat blog, I made my way to Manna for a protein-fest. The memory of this visit stuck with me as I visited the inferior Manna outpost in the Fox Hills mall. Granted, I wasn’t too disappointed, because you can’t really be disappointed with so much meat, but I knew there was something better out there. By the time I made it back to Manna in Koreatown, it was no longer Manna, but had become Meat, which is a far more appropriate name.

To say that nothing changed aside from the name would only be an understatement if I had a terrible memory, but if my memory did serve me, everything was unchanged. The place was still in one of those sort of indoor, sort of outdoor settings, which mad for a great place to eat. This setting was what the mall version truly lacked. Even the prices were the same! For 16.99, Meat offered 6 different meats that could be ordered in any quantity for us to cook at our table. The options were: Beef Brisket, Pork Belly, Spicy Beef Short Rib, Regular Beef Short Rib, Spicy Chicken Bulgogi and Beef Bulgogi.

We ordered all the meats and just about all of them were incredible. And, whenever we ran out of something delicious, we had a button at our table to push to call our waiter back over. Of course, the button was right where your elbow would normally go, so we ended up calling the waiter over a bit more than we really wanted to.

Rather than break down and explain every meat, I’ll just say that the Beef Bulgogi and the Spicy Beef Short Rib were easily the greatest dishes. The pork belly and the beef brisket were the worst of the bunch. And in this bunch, being the worst simply meant that they did not have enough flavor. The cuts were great, but beyond that they could not compete. The bulgogi sauce was just the perfect amount of sweet and the spicy short rib sauce was just the right amount of spicy. Plus, both of these cuts were tender and juicy.

And it all goes down smooth with a bottle or three of Hite, everyone’s favorite Korean beer. And by everyone I mean me.

On the side, Meat brings out a bunch of little pickled side dishes and some sort of eggy dish. I looked at these, but quickly moved back onto my meat, because I had no need to waste stomach space on such things, even those that weren’t veggies.

Meat also carries on the traditions of Manna with that whole champagne celebration thing. You know, where you tell them that someone at your table is having a birthday and then they put on some crazy Korean birthday music and spray the birthday boy/girl with a whole shower of champagne. It matters not whether that person is dressed in their Sunday finest or Monday worst, they are getting showered.

In short, Meat is amazing. The very name should be enough to tell you it is awesome, but really the whole experience is remarkable. From the setting to the meats to the prices to the champagne shower, Meat was a winner on every account. Should you ever find yourself in need of food in Koreatown, you will not be disappointed by Meat.

EDIT: This location is closed, but miraculously Sorabol lives on elsewhere.

Since Korean BBQ has never let me down and the Century City food court has also never let me down, I decided to check out Sorabol, the Korean BBQ place in the Century City food court. At the time it seemed like a great idea. I walked up to their stand and saw a few different food items hanging out in heating trays, so I chose their beef short ribs. They looked a bit dry, but the woman behind the counter ladled some sort of Korean sauce over them. They came with noodles, rice and some vegetable sides. I dismissed the vegetable sides and paid my 10 bucks, which I thought was a pretty good deal. I was wrong.

Do you like eating sand? No? Because that’s what eating these ribs tasted like at times. Every few bites I would bite into something crunchy, and not the bone. No, this was as though the ribs had fallen into charcoal and been dusted off. To make matters worse, I don’t think I’ve eaten drier ribs in my life. Usually the fats around ribs make them juicy and tasty, but somehow any juiciness had been cooked out of these things. The flavoring was decent, but nothing special and certainly not good enough to overcome the feeling that I was consuming a desert.

The rice and noodles tasted just fine, but they were not the most important part of the dish. Sorabol certainly failed in my book, but they somehow manage to stay in business in the delicious Century City food court. Perhaps I just got a bad batch of food, but I really can’t imagine it being any better.

On Saturday, my friends and I headed down to Koreatown for the Korean BBQ Festival and Cook-Off. Korean BBQ is known to be heavy in meat, so I felt this would be a great opportunity to tackle my daily meat intake.

The festival ran from 12:00-5:00 and although we arrived around 1:00, the lines were already getting pretty long. I wasn’t too surprised by the long lines since the event was free, plus $10 per plate.

Assuming the longest lines had the best food, I jumped into one of the lines without

even knowing what it was. This was one of the areas in which the festival could have improved. If they had put the signs above the booths rather than on the table, I would have really been able to decided where to go. Instead, I (and likely a lot of other people) just jumped in a random line. Eventually a friend joined me and held my place so I could find out. I went to the front and saw that it was called the Beverly Tofu House. The name scared me a bit, considering tofu is typically the unvegan enemy, but the food I saw being unloaded was plenty meaty. I went back to my spot in line and devised a plan: My friend would hold my spot in line while I went to a different booth with a shorter line and brought the food back for us to eat in line. The plan was genius, and I set off.

One key component to my plan, which I neglected to tell my friend, was that I was also looking for a place without kimchee. I know it is almost sacrilegious to like Korean food without liking kimchee, so I was afraid to announce my disdain for the strangely pickled cabbage out loud for fear that I would have been kicked out of the event. But now that I am far removed from Koreatown, I feel comfortable announcing that kimchee might be one of the worst foods I’ve ever accidentally tasted. Luckily, I quickly found a place called So Hyang with a short line and no kimchee.

After five minutes, I returned to my place in the other line again, but this time with a plate full of meat and salad. Luckily my friend was not of the unvegan persuasion and ate the salad while I ate most of the meat. The meat was from a cow, but damned if I could say which part. I had watched as one of the workers cut little slices of beef with meat scissors, but I still had no idea what to call the cuts . There was also a massive bone on the plate, probably meant to say where the beef came from, but I’m no cow scientist. The beef slices were really tasty and although I could see the fat glistening in the sun, the fat didn’t distract from the tastiness.

While waiting in line, we got to watch an eating contest that was put on by the event organizers. Apparently people had signed up without knowing what they would have to eat. I secretly hoped it would be dog or some sort of organ meat, but instead it was a dry Korean snack called Choco Pie. This was a little disappointing, but still somewhat entertaining.

About 30 minutes later, we finally arrived at the front of the line at the Tofu House. There we were given a plate full of short ribs, pickled vegetables, rice and potatoes. Once again, I allowed my buddy to have his way with the vegetables while I concentrated on the short ribs. These were definitely worth waiting in line for, but probably not for as long as we just had. The meat was deliciously seasoned and perfectly cooked.

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When I was done, I still wanted to try more Korean food. Unfortunately, the lines had grown too long to be worth it. Even the previously short So Hyang had gained a huge following.

For the first year of an event, I was pretty impressed by the outcome, but they definitely have some kinks they need to work out. Better sign placement and preparing meat ahead of time would have gone a long way in making the Korean BBQ Festival and Cook-Off an even more memorable event.