A Korean version of Chinese at Shanghai Mong

Korean-Chinese restaurants are usually frequented for a few specific dishes: tangsuyuk, a version of sweet-and-sour pork; jjamppong, a spicy noodle soup with an alarmingly red-colored broth; and jajangmyeon, above, a noodle dish kin to the Chinese zhajiang mien. Typically the sauce for jajangmyeon is gloppier in texture—in a good way—and it is not sweet like Chinese versions that have hoisin sauce in the mix. One of the primary ingredients is a paste of roasted soybeans, which gives the sauce its dark, almost black color; there's also pork and/or bits of seafood, and lots of soft, slow-cooked onions. It's served alongside kimchi, pieces of raw white onion to dip in vinegar, and yellow half-moons of takuan. A person who's only eaten the Chinese renditions of tangsuyuk, jjamppong, or jjangmyeon might find these dishes all very familiar, but also distinctly Korean. For me they are different items altogether.

I had the above bowl of noodles with TL at Shanghai Mong, which is one of the more popular Korean-Chinese restaurants in K-town, and thought it was okay. It satisfied my craving, but in the end it sort of lacked oomph. I think there are better places for this dish out there.

I enjoyed the boiled dumplings we ordered, though, which were plump and filled with pork and chives. We had gotten them as a side dish/appetizer but TL commented later that there was enough in one order to constitute a meal. He was right—I could have foregone the noodles and happily scarfed them down instead.