Okay, back to Los Angeles last December. Or rather, as I noted in my report on the Tustin branch of Sichuan Impression last week, back to Orange County. For that is where Garden Grove is located. I’ve noted before that Garden Grove is home to a large Korean population. It’s no Koreatown (I mean the one in Los Angeles) but it has a larger and better Korean food scene than most large American cities—certainly miles past that in the Twin Cities. We do our Korean grocery shopping there on our visits and also eat out from time to time. On this occasion, we were at Jong Ro Shul Lung Tang. Their name tells you what their specialty is: shul lung tang or sullungtang/seollungtang, the long-simmered beef bone soup. But there’s a lot else on their menu as well if that’s not all you want to eat.
The restaurant occupies one corner of a strip on Garden Grove Blvd. and is a bit larger than it appears to be from the outside. We were there on a rainy late December day and bowls of hot soup were just the thing we wanted. Between us we had three soups/stews on the table. The missus had the sullungtang, the older boy got their galbitang (beef short-rib soup), and I had a bowl of their gamjatang (pork back/neck-bone stew with potato). The younger boy bucked the trend and got a sizzling platter of their onjium-bokkeum or stir-fried squid. Because we are greedy we also got an order of their soondae or blood sausage (though we took most of it home to eat later).
The food was all quite good though nothing to go very far out of your way to eat if you’re in Los Angeles County. Coming from Minnesota, however, we were well satisfied.
For a look at the restaurant, the menu and what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it cost and to see what’s coming next.
Service was very friendly by Korean restaurant standards. The total with tip was about $145. This was food for five people, so about $29/head. Not cheap but not out of line with the market.
Alright, let’s keep the retrospective restaurant reports train rolling. Tomorrow I’ll have another report from last December, but this time from Delhi.