Spicy kimchee...yes! So many places serve bland kimchee…read more Love the atmosphere and good food. I had mandu and chapchae. Will have to come back to try more dishes before my vacation ends.

I didn't expect to get Korean ramyeon so excellent in Argentina. The bulgogi beef was super tender…read more The broth was dense and savory. The noodles were thick and chewy. This place is excellent .

almuerzo sábado al mediodía : ambos platos estaban…read moreriquísimos: vegetariano y con carne : nada Servicio: excelente y rapidísimo Deco: tranqui, cantina de comida rápida Tip: comida al paso con sabores alucinantes lunch Saturday noon : both dishes were great: the vegetarian and the meat : nothing Service: excellent and quick service Deco: chill, fast food canteen Tip: amazing flavors in a fast food service

Had lunch here today and it was delicious. We both got the bibimbap clásico, one spicy one not, and…read moreit's the best I've had in awhile. The tea we got was also very good. I would even go just for the tea. The waitress was very nice and helpful with ordering. It was a little tight with the amount of people but still very worth it.

Nice array of ban chan, as well as great shortribs. Unlike many of the places we've tried, here the…read moremeat comes already cooked - there's a big parrilla out in a rear courtyard and someone out there grilling up the ribs (most of the meat is already sliced off the bone), and it's served on a little tabletop grill with a few coals underneath to keep the meat hot. There's also a plate of perfectly cooked and delicious oxtail, some fried fish, fried chicken wings, and more, including probably the best soup we've had at one of these restaurants. The one thing we both agreed on that was that while there were perhaps a few fewer dishes than at some of the others, there wasn't a single misstep. Each and every dish fell somewhere between good and excellent. And, that more than justifies the slightly higher price of 350 pesos/person instead of the more typical 300. Put this one at the top of your list for Korean barbecue in town.

Literally meaning "In Yu's house", this is apparently one of the older Korean BBQ restaurants in…read moretown. It's a little fancier than the other places we've been, and, a little pricier (at 380 pesos/person plus beverages). At the same time, the service is better, and much more attentive than any of the other spots we've been (setting aside the occasional flirtatious waiter). Although they were never full, they got close to it, and they'd advised me when I contacted them that they don't take walk-in diners, it's reservation only. Big array of ban chan. High quality, no doubt. Fewer sort of "side dishes" - there were some scallion pancakes, some deep-fried stuffed zucchini, and a soup, and that was about it. More variety in the meat selection for the grill, with shortribs, hanger steak, pork belly, some tripas (both small and large intestines - something I've not seen anywhere else), and calamari tentacles. There was also an odd sort of egg mixture in one of the little troughs where the cooking grease runs off, and we were show to mix in the raw, frozen corn off to the side there, and let it cook by virtue of the hot grease dripping into it. Kind of comes out like a sweet corn pudding that I don't want to eat again. Overall, nice space, friendly and attentive service, and good food. It doesn't supplant my top three for Korean BBQ, but it is good, and might be the only daytime Korean BBQ spot over in the Floresta Koreatown (which, in response to the other review already posted here, isn't particularly dangerous, even at night - I might not wander the streets, but just to go to a restaurant, it's fine).

I haven't had Korean BBQ for 2 months. I was desperate. They said this restaurant is in a dangerous…read moreneighborhood. "DO NOT go there at night!" I went during the afternoon with a friend. I arrived at 3pm. They looked closed. I knocked. The owner said hello. He then opened the restaurant for us. We were the only 2 in the whole place. Boy am I glad I went. The meats were plentiful. The banchans were delicious. My stomach was crying out in joy. What a hidden gem in the roughest parts of BA. Go there and eat. But don't go at night.

We have been holding off on this one, not sure whether it was a Korean restaurant or not. The…read morecharacters on the sign outside are Chinese (yes, I know, prior to the introduction of the Hangul alphbet, Koreans used Chinese characters), and we'd been unable to get a solid translation on the first two characters (bao cheng). So, we've been trying the other spots first. This weekend we decided to give it a go, and mounted the stairway and got ourselves buzzed in. Found Korean characters inside, and waiter confirmed that the name was Boseong, the name of a province in South Korea which for half a millennium has been famous for its green teas. (Oh, and "bao cheng", the Chinese characters turns out to be the Chinese name for the same province.) Turns out to be another Korean barbecue joint! (Makes sense, it used to be one called Mido that closed up about a year and a half ago.) No questions asked, we'd barely even doffed our jackets and sat before a grate was placed over the barbecue pit and a whopping plate of what had to be two kilos of beef, half coated in gochujang and the other half not, hit the table. We noticed that the grate wasn't getting hot, and started to flag down a waiter to see about turning on the gas, when one approached from the kitchen carrying a bucket of fiery, burning wood coals with a pair of tongs. That got lowered into the pit - this is the first one we've encountered that didn't just use a gas burner, and adds a nice smokiness to the grilled meats. It also explains the huge extraction pipes. In short order, a small array of what turned out to be excellent ban chan also joined the beef, and we got going. First off, was simply noting the high quality of everything. The kimchi and other nibbles were spicy, well balanced, and fresh - we even liked the tripe! The smoked fish, at pretty much every place we've been, has been more or less dried out, this was soft, fresh, and perfectly flaky. Little mini mandu were tasty, but a little gummy. Slightly improved by tossing them on the grill, but not among my favorite dumplings to date. Same for the scallion pancake, lacking in scallions for the most part, and a little doughy. Come to think of it, we probably could have tossed it on the grill too. On the other hand, excellent, fresh oysters with lemon and spicy chili sauce. We never did get our bowl of soup that other tables were getting at the end, but neither of us was hungry enough to eat them anyway. After the food finishes, they bring over a pot of chilled tea of some sort - tasted like some kind of nut infused sweet liquid, something like chestnut. It was a nice way to finish. And, it all comes in at the same 300 pesos/person that the other grill spots in the 'hood charge. We left, very happy campers.

Walked in and saw two customer eating. The restaurant person came over and said they are closing…read more We were there at 2pm & sign said 3pm closing. And that they don't accept credit card. Then walked away. So much for a hardy Korean food.

A revisit to Bi Won, more or less on the border of Recoleta and Congreso areas, a place I first…read morereviewed on my blog about 30 seconds after I arrived in BA a decade ago. Absolutely nothing has changed. No, really, nothing. The ambiance is exactly as it has always been, perhaps, at best, mildly spruced up, but more just enough to not quite let it go to seed. I'm pretty sure the same waiters are working as have always been. The menu is identical other than pricing - okay, there's a change - dinner for two will now run you around 4-500 pesos with tip, still eminently reasonable for the food, which is as solid, authentic, and tasty as it was ten years ago - we obviously shared the ban chan dishes, and the waiter even brought more different ones when he saw how much we enjoyed; and then pork dumpling soup (manduguk), and a gobdol bibimbap in the piping hot stone bowl. It saves a trip to bajo Flores or Floresta to get a fix on Korean flavors - which does not negate that there are plenty of spots out there with more delicious and more authentic food. Bi Won gets a more touristy crowd, but on most of my visits, the tourists have been Korean, looking for a taste of something familiar amidst the plethora of parrillas in the city.

There's no menu. It's an "all you can eat" kind of setup, but no buffet - they just start bringing…read moreyou stuff once you sit down and keep going until you stop - and you can ask for "refills" on any dishes that you like. First up, the usual array of dishes of ban chan arrived first. A nice selection, our favorites were the just barely poached octopus with chili sauce (really mild though), and the chili tripe (also very mild). Disappointingly, not a spicy dish in the mix, and no kimchi. But then we saw a Korean family arrive and they got a much bigger array, including kimchi and other dishes. We flagged down our waiter and asked, and he sort of mumbled a bit (he's actually quite charming and speaks flawless English with a clipped British accent) about not thinking we'd want that stuff but then promised to get it for us. Despite asking again a bit later on, we never did get the spicy dishes. More small dishes showed up, with decent dumplings, some really good grilled fish, tofu, and a few others. We continued to munch away happily. I should also note, we were happy to find something besides the ubiquitous selection of Quilmes and Stella Artois beers, with Tsing-tao on the menu (why not a good Korean beer? I know they have them in Koreatown, or at least used to, so they should be available). A single small pancake for wrapping things up arrived - a little surprising that we didn't get one apiece, but so be it. And, rice finally arrived on the table. At about the same time the first of the items for grilling showed up. A bit earlier our waiter had brought a small basket of hot coals which he placed under the grill element and then turned on the gas, which I guess keeps the coals hot, but seems a strange mix to me - maybe it's always that way at Korean bbqs, I never noticed. Here we got frozen slices of pork belly and frozen shrimp. It's fine, by the way, that they're frozen, it's actually kind of common - you drop them straight onto the grill and cook them to your tastes. The pork belly was good. The shrimp were freezer burned and pretty tasteless. Really good, plump oysters drizzled with a slightly sweet chili sauce were brought to the table - I could have just sat there and eaten those. Delicious! As we'd finished off the pork belly and shrimp, our next grilling selection arrived. Marinated shaved beef, differently marinated pork, and squid tentacles garnished the plate, and we tossed them all on to get them cooking. The octopus were the best, but all were good. A plate of lettuce leaves was on the side for wrapping, along with various dipping sauces. I think we'd have appreciated, at some point, a little info on what we were being served, but for the most part, service was wordless unless we asked questions. And finishing off the meal with two different soups, a really excellent seafood broth, and a good, but less spectacular, meat broth filled with greens.

A culinary adventure. I'm still trying to figure out just what the Hell I ate. Did I like it? Hell…read moreyes. It was, without a doubt, absolutely ravaging. Do I know what I was? No clue whatsoever. Mineral? Vegetal? Animal? Beats me. But I had a great time, saw things that seemed to have been snatched straight out of Middle Earth, and felt like Indiana Jones in the scene from Temple Of Doom. In other words, it was cinematic.

I do like Namu. The menu is very limited, 14 items only, appetizers and principle plates included…read more For the Palermo neighborhood, the comida coreana is good. The food could be spicier, with a better selection of side dishes (banchan), and slightly larger portions of some items. The better Korean food requires a bus ride or 2 from this area, 45-55 minutes usually, to 1 of the two Korea towns in Buenos Aires.

About two weeks ago I was alerted by a friend to the imminent opening of a new spot in the heart of…read morePalermo, Namu, José Cabrera 5600, corner of Fitz Roy, taking over the spot abandoned by Roy Bar, a sort of dive craft beer bar (is that an oxymoron?) that offered up burgers and wraps. Although I'm not overly fond of reviewing spots when they first open, as everyone needs time to get their act together, I thought I'd give it a try, and then decide whether to hold off and give them a couple of weeks, or go ahead. Obviously, I've decided to go ahead. Pretty room, with an interesting "garden" ceiling (I think it's all plastic plants, but some of them look real, maybe it's a mix?). The menu is relatively short, with just five appetizers and eight main courses available. They do cover a nice range of different types of dishes. Of course, dumplings are my litmus test at most Asian restaurants, and the gun-mandu were delicate, flavorful, and cooked perfectly. Even with only five of them, they're a far better deal at 170 pesos than last week's round of eight mediocre ones for 180 pesos at the "fast food" Dumpling House. Interestingly, unlike any other Korean restaurant I've been to, they don't put banchan on the table at the beginning of the meal. They're only served with the main courses, and, different dishes get a different number of (and presumably selection of) side dishes. I ordered up the daeji-bulgogi, spicy marinated pork, stir-fried, and served with rice. Again, unusual in the presentation, normally this would come with a side of lettuce leaves and some pickled vegetables to create wraps. But, it was absolutely delicious as is, I just missed that fresh crunch of the lettuce. 380 pesos. I'd also asked for extra picante, and someone came out of the kitchen to let me know that because of the marinating process, it was a set level of spicy (pretty mild, as it turned out, despite the three chili symbol next to it on the menu), but they were happy to bring me a little side dish of gochujang chili paste to add to my tongue's content. The banchan - very good, and nicely spicy kimchi, quite good pickled daikon, and just okay stewed eggplant and marinated tofu. Overall, love the space, excellent service. Both dishes I tried were absolutely delicious. By comparison to either Koreatown, and for portions that are a bit smaller than you'd find out there, it's a bit pricey, but for the heart of Palermo, it's actually a quite reasonable meal for the quality. And, they take debit/credit cards (Visa only), something almost non-existent in either Koreatown. I will definitely be back for more! Highly recommended.

This place has no sign on the door, it just looks like a house with a buzzer, but I'd been clued in…read morethat there was a "Korean Fried Chicken" spot along that block (in fact, that's how Google Maps marks it, although they think it's across the street at 682, a vacant lot - I've tried to change it, but they haven't accepted the change). There is actually a restaurant sign on the house next door at 685, but it was locked up tight. I stood around for a few minutes figuring out my next stop, and luckily, a couple of businessmen came along, rang the bell, and went in, and I saw it was a restaurant. So, gave it a shot. They were quite welcoming, and let me know that at lunch they only offer the various iterations of fried chicken, or the stir fried noodle dishes, the rest of the menu is dinner only. The name, dagi myeoni, means tea ceremony. I ordered the "Chicken Hot", to which my waitress replied, "But without the spicy sauce, right?" "No, I like spicy." "Okay...." Food arrives, a whopping place of wings separated into joints, in a sweet and sour sauce with no kick. "This isn't spicy, don't you have an actual spicy sauce like it says on the menu?" "Well, we gave you the sweet and sour because spicy isn't for you." "I want spicy." Heads to the kitchen, comes back with sweet and sour sauce with maybe a tablespoon of gojuchang stirred into it. "Here's spicy sauce, but you won't be able to eat it." I ate it all (really good, could still use more kick), they were shocked. "How did you eat that, it's too spicy for you people?" "Not for me. Next time, spicy like Koreans eat it, okay?" She was so sweet about it all though that I handed her a decent tip and got an "Okay!" with a big grin. Oh, and they'd given me salad and sweet pickled daikon for my ban chan, while the tables around me got kimchi and other spicy dishes for theirs.