A couple weeks ago my dad and stepmom came into town, craving seafood and a little adventurous eating. I knew exactly where to take them — Ondal 2, a Korean restaurant specializing in seafood hotpots, bubbling soups cooked right at the table.

One thing is certain: you will not leave Ondal 2 hungry. Small aprons set at each place point toward the messy face-stuffing to come, and as we put them on the table is swiftly paved with handmade panchan. The egg souffle is particularly good, soft and slightly sweet, like an ethereal tofu. A whole salt-grilled mackerel pike is so succulent I find myself picking meat from the bones even after the meal is over and I am stuffed.

We order a large spicy crab soup, a medium short rib soup and the seafood pancake. The pancake arrives on individual plates, a golden square of dough studded with chunks of squid and green onion. But it is the spicy crab soup that steals the show, four whole crabs arranged in a brothy red bath. Our waiter, the owners’ son, comes over to explain the dish and his family’s restaurant as he attacks the crabs with a pair of shears. Smaller female crabs, prized for their tasty roe, peek out from beneath the soup’s surface. Snip. His mother does all the cooking and everything is made from scratch. Crunch. Each of the four large crabs is stuffed with a crab cake, one of his mother’s specialties. Snap. Business was crazy for them during the six months immediately following a good write-up in the LA Times, but things have calmed down now. Crack.

Then he puts down his shears and it is time to eat.

After slurping down half the soup and sucking clean a formidable pile of crab shells, we are ready for the second act. A waitress comes over with a handful of dough and begins stretching thick noodles, dropping them into the still-bubbling broth, while the short rib soup is whisked away, to be replaced by the seaweed-flecked fried rice the waiter is mixing up nearby. We groan. We are so full. But we keep eating.

Dessert is a sweet nutty tea poured over a small cup of shaved ice, thankfully light. Drinking it seems to revive me and I suddenly notice an elderly Korean woman watching Nanny 911 on a large TV at the back of the room. The mood is warm and comfortable, like I’ve been invited into the home of someone generous with a mom who cooks rockin’ Korean food, and I vow to get myself invited back.

Ondal 2, 4566 W Washington Blvd.  (323) 933-3228.

via Anjali Prasertong, 10 February 2009 1:08pm | 1 |