After checking out some live music, while walking to the car, I saw a small sign in korean. Then I realized that this was the restaurant a friend had told me about years ago. The one that’s in a parking lot. The one behind other restaurants. So this is where it is! It’s Koreana, and it’s pretty much a fast-food korean joint.
You order at the register and get a number. Then they bring the food to you. You get your own water or drink and your own utencils. It’s somewhat cafeteria style. One of the most popular dishes here seems to be the dolsot bibimbap. I forced K to get it since he’s never eaten korean food before. And because he can’t do spicy, he didn’t even put the kochujang in it. But he still liked it. They give you a big thing of kochujang and I actually took it home with me. It was awesome. And I used it to make my own ghetto bibimbap at home for three meals.
It wasn’t a particularly warm day so I got the jjamppong. The flavor of the soup and the fixins were all fine, but the bowl did not have nearly enough noodles in it. Seriously, it was like mostly stuff and very little noodles. It should be the other way around. So that was disappointing. Add more noodles and I would have been beyond happy. It’s a nice and affordable option for those in University City.

My mom’s church was trying to raise some money so they sold a bunch of hot food and prepared food. Here’s a crapton of kimchi. Each of these giant bags was only $10 and my mom made me buy some. And then, she took it from me so she could keep some more and give some to her friends. So basically, she made me go to her church and buy her kimchi. But it was some damn good kimchi. Seriously.
They were also selling some greens. Did these come from their garden? I’m not sure. I think this is lettuce. I can’t be sure though.
Some fish cakes for sale… which she also made me buy. So now it’s sitting in my freezer. Some day, when it’s cold out again, I’ll make some ddukbokki with it.
They were also selling big bottles of kochujang and what are these… some kind of mochi?
Ok, let’s move onto the hot prepared foods. Here’s the haemulpajeon (seafood pancake). Very good!
Here’s some kimbap. You know why this was so good? Because there was no damn cooked spinach in it. That always ruins it for me. So this was definitely a winner in my book!
And here’s a big container of ddukbokki. It was pretty good, but not great. But you know what I do when someone puts a plate of ddukbokki in front of my face? I eat the hell out of it. I don’t care how good or bad it is, I’ll still eat it. In addition to the food, they also had some traditional korean cultural performances. It was pretty entertaining. If it involves food and music, then this is the only kind of churchgoing I enjoy.

I somehow ended up at an all you can eat korean bbq spot one night. I wasn’t really prepared for this, but I went along for the ride. It’s in Upper Darby, and the last time I was at this location, it was just a regular korean restaurant. But now, it’s for the gluttons.
It’s straight up buffet style and you can load up on whatever you want. There’s a bunch of different korean banchan dishes, and most of them are only ok. They had my favorite spicy marinated raw blue crab, but it really wasn’t that great. The best banchan they have, by far, is the radish kimchi. It’s really good here! There’s also a few soups. There’s also random chinese and japanese style dishes like teriyaki sicks and lo mein. There are some fruits for dessert and one of the randomest things I found and thoroughly enjoyed – fried plantains. But really, you come here to eat some darn meat.
So you grab whatever meat you want, but don’t make the mistake that some of my tablemates did. They just grabbed giant piles of random meats before really determining what they liked. And remember, you can only cook so much of it at a time, so otherwise, it’s just going to sit at your table. So of course, we got some of the traditional korean bbq short ribs. And don’t worry about doing the cooking because the servers will actually do the cooking for you. They flip the meat, make sure it’s cooked, and cut it into bite-sized pieces for you. So there’s actually very little for you to do.
The rib meat is seasoned ok and tastes ok, but it’s a bit on the thin side. But it does help cook a whole lot faster.
Here’s some of the 6265 lbs of pork belly that we had to cook up. Ultimately, I kept feeding it to H/A and somehow, he was able to eat most of it. It was quite amazing to witness, and also truly disturbing. The pork belly is good, but one should really only eat so much. There was just way too much of it to be healthy.
They also have shrimp!
And also some chicken and plain meat. I think there’s also spicy marinated pork, but I didn’t get to try any of that. The chicken looks a bit odd when raw, and even odder when cooked, but it’s pretty tasty and tender and flavorful. It’s a good place to go if you want to try all different kinds of meat and be a total glutton. If you eat enough meat, it can be a pretty good value too.