Polarization

Food, ramblings, and um.. ya food.

Friday, February 23, 2007

NelBom- Stanton, CA

My first post is, oddly enough, about Korean BBQ. It also happens to be all-you-can-eat. But if you consider the price for the variety and amount of food AND the quality of the food, you will wonder why you never saw this place. They serve the meat and any of the banchan to your table. So you can sit back and enjoy the meal at your leisure.

It's located not in the usual location: it's not in Garden Grove's Korea Town. Infact, it's on Beach, between Cerritos and Katella.

You have a choice of List A, or List B. List A has 4 choices of meat, for $11. List B has 10 meat choices, for $15. They both come with a handful of banchan, as well as steamed egg, thinly sliced rice noodle. You can ask for rice if you want. The Bean Paste Stew is commonly known as Miso, is pretty much a staple stew side item in Korean homes. It's name is "dwen-jang-guk."


This is the thinly sliced rice noodle and thinly sliced radish you "wrap" your meat with.


Compliments of the banchan that came w/ our all you can eat. To me, any banchan is mediore, because of my mom's cooking: it's just side attraction to the main course.

We started off with Cha-dor-bae-gi, the Black Angus Beef Brisket. It's thinly sliced and cooks up fast~This was only 1/2 of the meat given.. the rest were on the grill.

Ahhhh meat...


Next up was the Marinated Sliced Beef Rib, "Joo-moor-luck." It was very tender and flavorful.

Note the marbalization of the meat before cooking.


Items not pictured: side of salad that you can eat on its own or as a part of the "warp" w/ the noodle slice, steamed egg, whole grilled fish.

We also ordered the barbequed ribs, but they are just the meat portion and not the bones. I wasn't too excited about the large slab pieces and wished I got more of the joo-mool-luck.

On a previous visit, we did get the BBQ Chicken and Pork. Pork is done with a spicy blend and quite soft. The BBQ Chicken wasn't all too exciting and nothing special.

On Fri-Sat nights, it does get crowded. Even on a full night, we did get good service, and the waitress only forgot 1 thing, which we reminded her again.

Overall, considering the price, and considering it's all-you-can-eat, and quality of the meat, its a great bargain. Don't expect great banchan tho, if that's what you seek for in a Koean restaurant.

NelBom Korean BBQ Restaurant
10712 Beach Blvd
Stanton, CA 90680
714-226-9292

(Update as of 05.01.07 - quality does not seem as good as before.. I will make 1 more attempt at this place and determine if it's worth going back or not.)

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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

intro

So, I guess a bit of an intro is in order: I love to eat. I mean, I love a good med-rare steak to delicate tastes that dance around my tongue. A lot of my friends love the places I suggest and the new places I take them to. Most of that is in part of me exploring places on my own, others are from places i find interesting off other food blogs.

This blog will be mostly for my food review and maybe occasional rants. So please bear with me.

Why the name Polar and title of Polarization? One of my nicknames was Polar bear. I could do the coca-cola polar bear sounds pretty well. Plus I'm a big guy for being Asian (6'-3", 275 lbs). Polarization used to be the title of my old blog that was lost in the shuffle a few years back. In a way, I am resurrecting it and getting back into blogging.

I was born in Korea, moved to the US when I was 9 years old. So I am VERY familiar with all the different Korean dishes and specialty places. Yes, not all Korean restaurants are not BBQ or tofu. Those I hope to cover in the near future. Also, some of the pronunciations will be used as close to the phonetically sounds of my native tongue. I will try to also put in the "popular" spellings or pronunciations, but I will ask that you do no correct my own spelling. Besides, I do not know who came up with them in the first place. One classic example is Banchan (panchan). Yes, you have heard "panchan" before, but the correct pronunciation is with a "B" sound. The description of banchan from Wikipedia is pretty accurate, with the exception of "meant to be finished at every meal." I do not know of 1 korean family that finishes their banchan in 1 meal sitting. (see what i mean by rant? lol) Perhaps they were referring to the small 'tranfer' dishes. But most Korean homes do not use them. Usually the dishes are shared and the remaining is stored away for the next day. It's a Korean thing, I know.. I can hear your 'ewww's.

My tastes will range from Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Philipino, Mexican, Italian, and of course, Californian/American. I do try new things and what not. If I do not like a certain kind of food, it is because I already tried it, and not because of what is in it. Geographically, I will be focusing closer to orange county and sometimes Los Angeles.

I guess that pretty much covers most of what an intro should cover ^^;; /rantoff


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