Thursday, December 4, 2008

Pigging out @ Ham Ji Park (Koreatown)


I was contemplating a few weeks back in getting on a diet. Not that I worried about looking good in my figure, but after writing my review about M Cafe de Chaya, I did had some pondering thoughts.

After a momentary break, my weakness took over and the first thing I thought about was needing to make a list before the diet. One place that I have always wanted to try was Ham Ji Park.


Marinated Pork Spare Ribs

For the longest time I had some craving for their popular marinated pork spare ribs. Supposedly it was something to die for based on some talks whenever the discussion was about this place. So on a cool Monday night, a few of us went down to the 6th Street location in heart of Koreatown to grub down on some of those ribs. (there is a Pico location off K-town that was recently opened up).

Please remind yourself to make a reservation. Don't assumed like I did thinking it was going to be snap that people will leave right away after a meal. People like in our group could commensurate over a few bottles of beer or soju with their hearty meals. I didn't planned that much ahead of time and waited about 35 minutes for a table on a Monday night.

Once We got situated in our table, we proceeded to chow down on that above mentioned marinated pork like there is no tomorrow. To me it was not bad. It was tender and have that little sweet taste to it like it had a secret sauce. With a dash of some seasoning and needed to be grill to perfection, this thing can probably win some top BBQ prize. The only reason I thought it was not bad only because I was more impressed with the other dish we ordered.


Pork Neck Bone Soup with Potato

That "other" dish is the pork neck potato soup. This was the one I was looking for to all night. The pork bone meat was slowly stewed and added potato in this rich, thick hearty soup. I think that because we were waiting for so long for a table, we devoured the pork bone stew once it arrived on our table. The soup wasn't too spicy, but it did have a little kick to it. It's the slow stewed pork that was very tenderly cooked that is the main attraction in that dish.

We also ordered a very peculiar dish for a supposed appetizer or a starter (it was the last dish to arrive). It was the spicy squid kimchee noodle dish. It comes off with noodles bundled in an half ear bun with the spicy squid in the middle of the plate. Then you stirred it up and mixed to your liking. I don't know if it was because people didn't want all of the noodles to be mixed and would eat the kimchee squid by itself, but we had mixed all of the noodles in to the spicy squid.


Spicy Kimchee Squid with Noodle (before and after it got stirred)

The spicy squid was also very delicious. Not only all three dishes were very satisfactory, but it also fulfilled a nirvana for me right before I got serious about the diet. I know the pork ribs at $17 a pop will be the main attraction to coming to this location, but I want to give a special shout out to the pork bone stew with potato as it deserves my kudos of the night.

Luckily there was a cafe next door that served Korean shaved ice. That destroyed any chance of any diet I had in my head. There was always next week if it ever gotten that serious.


Ham Ji Park
3407 W. 6th St.
Ste 101-C
Los Angeles, CA 90020
(213) 365-8773

Grade:

Ham Ji Park on Urbanspoon

Ham Ji Park in Los Angeles

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