L picked Kim’s Restaurant for the Sunday Night Dinner Club this month. And you know, well, it’s the best Korean BBQ in all of Philly (yes, I even think so), so I was totally stoked. So what if it’s in a dodgey neighborhood? Don’t worry, there’s security cameras in their parking lot, so it can’t be so bad! There were supposed to be 10 of us, so they had prepped two tables for us, and all the banchan was already laid out. Score. We started eating it right away. I do have to say, the quality of banchan is a pretty good sign of whether a Korean place is good or not, and really, their banchan is pretty damn good. Not everything is great, but their regular kimchi is great, and that’s a pretty good litmus test.

So yes, we came here to eat Korean BBQ. You cook it yourself, people. So don’t come here expecting to be pampered. And well, it is a Korean restaurant, so certainly, you know the service is going to suck. So just go in knowing this, and you’ll have a good time. There ended up being 7 of us, so we ended up getting 2 orders of the spicy kalbi and 1 order of the regular kalbi. Our waitress recommended that we get 4 in total, but I didn’t think we needed to do that. And in the end, we didn’t need to. So even though it says spicy kalbi, it really isn’t that spicy. And it’s definitely a bit different than the regular one, but trust me, it’s good in its own way, and not really spicy at all. Yes, it certainly looks spicy (it’s totally bright red), but it doesn’t taste that spicy at all. So get it. Trust me!

I ended up being the Korean food expert (haha) of the group, so I also ended up cooking the meat on my grill. We had two grills going. And you cook the meat over real wood coals. This is real Korean BBQ folks. And yes there is a fancy Korean BBQ stink air intake system over your table, but don’t even believe for a minute that you won’t have Korean BBQ stench reeking out of every pore of your body after this. You just will. There’s no getting around it.

In all my having to cook the meat glory, I totally forgot to take photos. Once I remembered, it was pretty much too late. That’s why there’s only this gross picture of the leftover bones from the spicy kalbi and L cooking the last few little bits of meat on the other grill. Oops, my bad. We did also order the haemul pajeon (seafood pancake) and the gochu pajeon (pepper pancake) as appetizers. As usual, the haemul pajeon rocked, and the gochu pajeon, well, it was good, but much spicier than expected!

The service…. well, it was actually particularly bad. Haha. We asked for refills on the banchan, and that took forever. And they didn’t give us everything that we wanted. We barely ever had any water on the table. Even when we kept asking. And we had to ask for rice like a half a dozen times. And when we finally got our rice, so much of the meat had already been eaten. But perhaps the charm of a Korean restaurant is that the bad service is part of the whole experience? No matter what though, the food is good, and you will leave full and happy and stinking like cooked meat.

Kim’s Restaurant
5955 N. Fifth St.
215-927-4550

Saturday night was spent in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood, dining and drinking at two of the area’s best spots – Divan Turkish Kitchen and the Sidecar. Dinner was first up, at Divan. It’s a cute and cozy spot on the corner of 22nd and Carpenter. There’s quite a number of tables, but very little room to maneuver between them. When I say cozy, I mean it. I apologize for the crappy pics. It wasn’t very bright in there, and I was experimenting with my dumb point and shoot by not using flash, and as you can see, it just didn’t work well. We had fairly early reservations, so when we first got there, we were one of the few parties there.

You get some complimentary bread, which is always nice, and we ordered the falafel with hummus as an appetizer. The falafel were delish – warm, flavorful, good texture, with a tahini sauce on top. The hummus, good, but a bit too liquidy. It seemed like it should have been thicker. So this place has a liquor license, but it’s also a BYOB, with a corkage fee. It’s nice that they offer that option.

D got the Karides (shrimp casserole). Notice the hilarious presentation in a fish shaped dish. He seemed to enjoy this dish quite a bit. S got the Hunkar Begendi (pureed eggplant topped with lamb). I didn’t taste the lamb of this, but I did taste the eggplant and I loved it. It had a kick ass smoky flavor. I could certainly have eaten a plate of this.

C went with the Kayseri Manti (turkish dumplings). This was pretty good, but the dumplings were so teeny. I think it would have been better with bigger dumplings, so you could taste the filling more. I went with the Iskender, which was the doner kebab (ground lamb) with a tomato sauce. It was ok, but I should have gone with the plain doner kebab. The sauce was rather bland, and it was supposedly served over a turkish pita, but it looked like to me that it was served over burnt croutons. It was weird. I would have liked it if it actually came on top of a pita. Yes, that is a giant pepper on my plate, and yes, it was hot.

In general, the food at Divan was good. Everyone enjoyed the food. Some of the portions could have been bigger, but the food was fine. Now, the service? Well, the service was weird. We keep wanting to chalk it up to “lost in translation”, but let’s just say that perhaps there were some communication issues with our waiters. We’ll just assume they’re Turkish, and they seem really really fresh from the motherland or something. D ordered an unsweetened iced tea. He got it. Then he asked for sugar, so he could sweeten it on his own. He got no sugar. Then he asked again, to another waiter, and he still didn’t get it. So then he asked again to the original waiter, and he brought D a new sweetened iced tea. It was bizarro. We were having a pretty good time, so even after we’d finished all our food, we just hung out talking and drinking wine and watching C drink his turkish coffee. They gave us a not-so-subtle hint of wanting us to leave by shoving another two-top next to our four-top. Ok, we get the hint, we’ll leave! We don’t blame them, it was a Saturday night, and they were quite busy. On to the next joint!

We walked down the street to the Sidecar. And you know how much I love this place from my previous experience here. I was the DD, so I did not drink, but S had a greyhound and C had some kind of weird beer he liked. And D, well, he was actually still hungry from his meal at Divan (he’s a good eater!) so he actually ordered more food! :-) He got the Philly. He seemed pleased, and finally sated.

And I certainly could not forget the pecan square from my last time here. I HAD to order it! Yum. Sweet, chewy, sweet, sticky, sweet, nutty goodness. Man. So damn sweet, but so damn good. We also had a slight communication problem here. D had to ask for ketchup twice. So weird! Maybe D just had bad condiment karma that night. Otherwise, the service at the Sidecar was good, and the waiter was funny and a good sport. Like I said before, I just love this place.

On Saturday night, we went to a lovely lovely show at Johnny Brenda’s. I’ve been there once before, but only to hang out and drink. This was my first time eating, as well as seeing bands in the upstairs venue. They don’t have a printed menu, just chalk boards with the daily offerings. The place is owned by the same people who run Standard Tap, so the food is similar. It’s definitely not your standard pub grub.

There’s a long bar, and very few places to sit. There are some small high tops and only a few sit down tables. And it’s usually quite full, so you just have to sneak in some bar space, which is what we did. We got an order of hummus, which came with warm and soft pita bread. Yum. And we both got the chicken kebab, which came on a whole piece of the same whole pita bread. While walking around earlier in the evening, I ran into a guy who was holding this, and the smell won me over, I had to have it. This thing was freakin good. I was pretty damn hungry, but even if I wasn’t, I still would have loved it. And on a non-food related note, I think this is my new favorite music venue. I’m kicking myself in the ass for not having been to a show here earlier. Small and intimate, excellent acoustics, and just a good vibe.