Where Do Rice Wrappers Come From? December 27, 2007

I honestly never thought about where the rice wrappers for KBBQ come from. Turns out somebody has to cut them to size (I still have no idea who makes them). Thank goodness I’m not the one cutting them, because they would be sure to turn out crooked and all different shapes. I can’t cut a straight line or make uniform sets of anything to save my life. Luckily the person working at the station below didn’t have that problem (judging by the wrappers we used, at least).

I got this photo at Soot Bul Gui Rim 1, the one on 6th. I have to say, I liked SBGR 2 (the Vermont one) better. I thought the quality of the meat was higher. At SBGR 1 the heart ended up tough, and I don’t remember it being that way at 2. However, SBGR 1 has the distinction of being the first KBBQ place where I’ve ordered chicken. Although it takes longer to cook than the other meats, here it grilled up nice and tender. Below is the chicken before:

And here’s the chicken after. It got a little blackened, as you can see, but the taste was there.

My verdict: If you want to try a Soot Bul Gui Rim, go to the Vermont one, which I blogged about here. They’re both all-you-can-eat for the same price. The ambiance at 1 may be slightly more upscale than at 2 (I said slightly), but I preferred the meat at 2 (although I can’t speak for the chicken at 2, which I didn’t order, and I do have to admit the chicken was good at 1).

Folks are probably shocked that I’ve finally updated this blog. And some of you are probably wondering what happened to the DARI Awards. I honestly didn’t realize it had been two weeks since my last post, and the DARI Awards are coming soon, I promise.

Soot Bul Gui Rim 1
3977 W 6th St
(6th & Western)
Los Angeles, CA 90020

Putting the Soot back in KBBQ July 24, 2007

Here’s the caveat: It’s been a while since my visit to Soot Bul Gui Rim. In fact, I went there for Easter this year. Seems appropriate, right? After Lent, which is supposed to be meatless, you go out and gorge on KBBQ? I can’t think of anything better.

Oh, here’s the second caveat: I stole the pic from Bon V. at My Culinary Adventures, who was one of the people with me for this Easter meal. Check out her blog entry on Soot Bul Gui Rim here.

Soot Bul Gui Rim uses a charcoal grill (actually it’s been hinted to me that it might be a hybrid charcoal/gas, but it looked and smelled like charcoal to me, and my clothes and hair certainly smelled like charcoal after we were done eating). My previous experience with a charcoal grill had been at Cham Sut Gol, where the grill sits down in an indentation in the table, has a semi-closed rack, and there’s less smoke. This grill was on the tabletop and had an open rack and there was plenty of smoke. In fact, the grill didn’t seem too eager to cooperate with us at first, so our first course got a bit charred. But eventually the grill realized we were in it to win it, so it settled down and we ended up with some nicely grilled meat.

Soot Bul Gui Rim has a varied selection of meats, including beef heart and beef tongue (which we ordered) as well as chicken (which we didn’t order). Yes, we ordered the heart and tongue and skipped the chicken; we’re no lightweights here. I grew up eating heart and tongue as often as my Pennsylvania German dad could persuade my mom to cook them, and now I tend to order them whenever they’re on the menu. The heart here was probably my fave of the meats we ordered, very tender. But the tongue was good, too. Oh, we ordered the usual kalbi and bulgogi as well, at least I think we did; I was concentrating more on the unusual.

The ambiance is okay. You’re there for the all-you-can-eat BBQ, which weighs in at about $15 per person. I found parking in the lot right outside, where every space was marked “45 minute parking” and everybody (including me) was parking for longer than 45 minutes. I was pleased because I located the place from the Korean sign, which I’ve been doing more often. Our waiter, who appeared to be Hispanic but wrote down our order in Korean (interesting detail there), was a little tough to flag down, but we managed. You don’t get the pricey experience we got at Cham Sut Gol, but you don’t pay the price either, and I liked the selection of meat better. Given a choice of the two, I’d pick Soot Bul Gui Rim.

Soot Bul Gui Rim
233 S. Vermont Ave.
(just north of Third)
Los Angeles, CA 90020