My grandpa and his wife came to town from Korea a few weeks ago and stayed at the JJ Grand Hotel, one of those weird little Koreatown hotels that must be for visiting Korean relatives only. We had a family dinner in the hotel's restaurant, as my grandpa, despite coming all the way from Korea, had no desire to stray far from the premises. (He actually had dinner there with my parents the night before, too.)
I was pretty confused when my mom told me where we were eating. I guess I didn't realize there were still Korean restaurants with zero Yelp presence. The clientele here must be 100% old and Korean, and the place must not rely on word of mouth like at all. It's not a new place or anything, just kind of drab and not noteworthy.
The restaurant is called Woo Mi Khwan, but I think it's also called Honmachi, depending on whether you feel like eating Korean or Japanese food. The menus were lumped together, as well as the dining areas, I'm pretty sure. We ate in a private room for a large party, so we didn't see the rest of the restaurant. It was kind of a depressing space--felt like a windowless conference room in an old office building. Service was decent. We were probably the only customers, but who knows! I guess in theory there could have been a whole Shining-style soiree in the main dining room.
The food was tolerable, of the caliber you might expect at, say, a fancy luncheon at your Korean Methodist church, or a second-tier Korean funeral buffet. My husband was into the complimentary dishes of snack mix--pretzels and Cheez-Its and rice puffs--and the banchan spread was decent, with some good spicy squid and sweet black beans, along with kimchi, seaweed, crunchy lotus, and cabbage with daenjang. Probably store bought, but not bad. There was also some soothing Korean radish soup I rather enjoyed.
I ordered from the Japanese side of the menu, and my dinner was solid enough. I got the eel entree, and it was tasty, the eel fatty and tender and slathered in that sweet eel sauce, served over a bed of slivered white onion. (Thing I learned at this dinner--Japanese eel and kimchi are actually pretty good together.) The deluxe sushi dinner, which we all shared, was not so good. It came with a few pieces each of a handful of nigiri--salmon, tuna, yellowtail, shrimp, eel, and something else, maybe halibut. I would've been happy with it if it came out of the plastic container in the refrigerated section of a grocery store, but it wasn't really restaurant quality. The fish fared better in Korean hwae dupbap, which my mom had for her dinner. This was tasty enough, with lots of greens and rice and mix-ins like pickled radish and seaweed salad. I also tried some of my brother's kalbi, and that was not great. Chewy and not very flavorful.
This is a wordy review for a weirdo Korean restaurant that you'll probably never go to, but hey, I don't know, life is long and who knows what might bring you to the JJ Grand Hotel. If you ever end up at Woo Mi Khwan and happen to read English, I hope I've at least stopped you from ordering the sushi. read more
