Korean-Chinese comfort food at Hyo Dong Gak

If it's not a full-on crawfish boil, another excellent thing for an Asian-food deprived girl to come home to is a plate of dumplings and a large bowl of jajangmyeon. I'd ordered practically the same meal at Shanghai Mong the last time I was in NYC, but this time TL and I were at Hyo Dong Gak, which I remembered from previous meals as being better.

The thin-skinned fried dumplings, filled with a savory mixture of juicy ground pork and chives, were huge and delicious. The ones I had at Seoul BBQ in Aurora, CO might have a slight edge—I dug that those were pan-fried instead of deep-fried—but I definitely enjoyed these a lot. Dumplings, fried: what's not to like, really?

TL's tasty chicken fried rice came with a bowl of fiery red soup, and unlike a lot of Korean dishes that appear to be spicier than they are, this one actually singed the tongue. We were both too wimpy to drink it and so left it mostly untouched.

As for the jajangmyeon, the noodles here were bouncy and resilient, and the sauce (which came on the side instead of on top) was richly flavored with bits of pork. There was so much of the sauce left that I took the rest of it home, mixing it into rice for another version of the meal. Over noodles is the ideal, but over rice ain't bad, either.