Somewhere new! This weekend, I was thinking... there's got to be a Korean place, somewhere - now that their are spots open outside of Koreatown, that I can order Korean food from. I mean, Bi Won, Zuti, Namu, Mr. Ho, Fa Song Song, Namu, Kakaoh Pop - all are within reasonable delivery distance. Surely one of them must be offering stuff through one of the delivery services. Well, Mr. Ho was - and I put together an order on one of the apps, and it was canceled by them, no reason given. Fa Song Song, for whatever reason, was showing as "temporarily closed". The others didn't come up when I search for Korean food or comida coreana. In momentary desperation, I put mandu in, the Korean dumplings, and Opio popped up, but was closed at the time, and... a spot I'd never heard of... Hanok popped up. Oh my! The opportunity to try a new restaurant during quarantine! According to Google Maps, they're at 25 de Mayo 562 in Retiro - downtown, which used to be a little sandwich shop, Sam Bucherie. So I stocked up!
Mandu - I'm going to give these just an okay. They were a little chewy, and while the filling was flavorful, it wasn't really well balanced. I kind of felt like these were... old... or had been frozen for too long... or something. But, oh, it was nice to have dumplings, even if just okay ones. 380 pesos.
Kimbap tradicional - they had a selection of kimbap, which I always think "Korean sushi rolls", but they're not, because the rice is different, and the fillings are not raw fish, but some sort of cooked meat, vegetables and egg. The "tradicional" came with "sausage", which I'd assert was a hot dog, but it was still well made and pretty darned good. 300 pesos.
Donkatsu - Since H is limited on what he'll try (though he did go for two dumplings and tried a slice of kimbap), I got him a fried pork cutlet, it came with rice and a cabbage salad, and donkatsu sauce. He ate the cutlet and the rice, without the sauce. I ate the salad. It was also pretty darned good. 460 pesos.
Dak bokkeum dopbap - Spicy stir fried chicken (I could swear I ordered jeyuk bokkeum dopbap, spicy stir fried pork...). Choice of white or brown rice, I figured, give a try to the latter. Both quite good. 420 pesos
Fried chicken dopbap - The whole Korean thing was brought on by a craving for spicy-sweet Korean fried chicken, and so when I saw this, which is the kissing cousin - essentially chicken nuggets done that style served with rice, I added in an order. We didn't eat all this food at one sitting, it was dinner one night and then lunch the following day. 450 pesos.
Okay - it was more than I'd set out to spend on our weekly delivery budget, but may just mean we'll not order a second time this week from elsewhere. With the exception of the dumplings it was all very good. Two portions of kimchi were thrown in the mix, and it was excellent kimchi. And really, for what I'm betting without seeing the place, given its location, is intended as a lunchtime/early evening takeout spot (25 de Mayo being in essence a pedestrian mall, with mostly that sort of restaurant), it gets really high marks all around. Definitely recommended and looking forward to the day I can go to Hanok in person and try it. read more