Hurry Up and Buy! Bulgogi in NorthCenter!
During our frequent trips to the North Center area, we’ve passed a number of restaurants that we have been telling ourselves that we would stop at, but never get around to. This goes for all neighborhoods, but this summer particularly we seemed to find ourselves in North Center a lot. So one Friday after the hustle of the 9-5, we headed on over to a little corner spot on Lincoln, just north of Irving Park Rd., called Cho Sun Ok. I’ve been hankering for a Korean fix for a while, and this put me to rest.
A hobby of ours, as lame as it sounds, is that when we are walking “off the eaten path, in Chicago” we tend to stop at as many restaurants as we find fitting just to grab a take out menu. We had stopped at this particular restaurant around the beginning of June to grab a souvenir menu, and were taken back by the joyous aroma of sizzling meat and marinade, and noticed it was “one of those table top stove” type of places. This usually means only good things.
So on this particular day, we made the trek back to indulge in a little Korean cuisine. We arrived at this BYOB at around 5 o’clock, which seemed to be perfect. We walked in, and were seated right away. Shortly through our appetizer, and from then, on we noticed that there was a steady stream of at least two people waiting to be seated. So I guess we lucked out.
As I mentioned, we started off with an appetizer. We kept it simple and order the fried dumplings. We were expecting just the normal 6 piece serving for two, so we were surprised at the plate they brought out, which consisted of about 10 pieces. These weren’t anything particular special. They actually reminded me so much of some frozen Korean dumplings that I bought from this Asian supermarket in Schaumberg (at Roselle and Higgins roads) and cooked at home. These were, ehhh, ok, but not needed.
Also, prior to the appetizers, Korean restaurants bring out a large number of small pre-appetizers, the size of tea cups, ranging from seaweed salads, to kimche, to some jelly cakes and sweet potatoes. We didn’t think about this before we ordered the dumplings, and could have gotten by with out them. Oh well, now we know.
The great thing about this place is that they do dinner meals, meaning that you can order one thing for a group of six, and do family style dining. That seemed to be popular with the rest of the restaurant patrons, so we went with it, choosing the Bulgogi – a mixture of marinated beef, green onions, garlic, sesame oil, and a sugary soy sauce mix. At that point, the waitress sparks up the table top grill, adjust the heat, and walks away. Now that the fire has started less than two feet away from me, I’m sucked into the burning glow sitting underneath the stone cooking slab. I cannot wait to see what they bring out and what kind of smells it will emit.
Shortly after the fire is started the waitress comes out with a plate of greens and bright healthy looking, thinly sliced beef, soaking in a dark sauce. She throws the contents of the platter onto the cooker, stirs it up a bit and walks away. There must have been a down draft because the warm, meaty air was blowing straight onto Lois. I love a woman who smells of exotic foods. Every few minutes, the waitress would come by, toss around the meat, and walk away, leaving us picking at our appetizers, and eyeballing the goodness that’s to come. Finally after about 15 minutes, she quietly informs us that it is ready to eat, and we can help ourselves. Lois, never really got the whole chop stick thing down (she’s Polish, so it makes sense), so we had to wait while they found the only fork in the restaurant, but once that arrived, we started to dig in. The Korean sticky rice is the perfect substance to eat with this dish. The meat was so flavorful, sweet, tangy, chewy, juicy and hot. Each bite was better than the last.
A side note — we guessed this restaurant was the real deal when we noticed that all but about 5 percent of the patrons were Korean. In our minds, that gave the food a definite seal of authenticity. Combine that with some reasonable prices (about $35 for the whole extravaganza) and we had a successful dining experience.
