In Search of Good Jajangmyeon

After a series of late-night K-drama marathons last year - which, for my own academic career, probably shouldn't happen too often - I started having intermittent cravings for jajangmyun, a.k.a. black bean noodles. Not to be confused with the chinese black bean noodles or cha jiang mien. The korean one originated from the chinese black bean noodles, but is now quite different.

I went to place that had really good jajangmyun before but I had forgotten the name and haven't been able to find it again! :( All I know is that the place was K-style chinese food, open 24 hours, in a strip mall where they also have a hopping nightclub of sorts ... Anyone has any idea?

So in an attempt to find another good place, I went to try Mandarin House, which had pretty good jajangmyun reviews. They had the regular jajangmyun, with no meat, and they also had a meat sauce jajangmyun. I wanted some meat, so that's what I ordered. My friend who was there does not like to eat meat (except for kalbi, which she would eat a lot of :> ) ordered the regular.

Here's the meat jajangmyun:
It seemed to me that the regular one that my friend got had more sauce and the sauce was thicker and blacker ... in other words, it looked better to me. Still, my jajangmyun was really pretty good, although I did want more sauce on it! Since the sauce is so good!

So while the jajangmyun here is pretty good, it's still not perfect in my opinion. I'm still looking for one with great sauce and lots of it, and with substantial amount of meat, too! If anyone has any recommendation, please do let me know!

Mandarin House
3074 W 8th St
Los Angeles, CA 90005
(213) 386-8976

Yay! Another Cooking movie!

While I was on the plane coming back from Indonesia I was lucky to find another cooking movie! This time it's a Korean movie based on a comic book called "Le Grand Chef", directed by Jeon Yoon-soo.

The story goes, there's a knife that used to belong to the last royal chef of korea. The royal chef cut off his hand with this knife so that he would not have to cook for the Japanese that had taken over. Now, the Japanese wants to return this knife to the Koreans and they are holding a cooking contest to determine the next owner of this knife.

Our main character is Sung-Chan (Kim Kang-Woo), who used to work at Woonam-Jung which is owned by the descendants (descendant of the apprentice, more like it) of the royal chef. Due to some reason which I won't tell you, he was kicked out ...

I don't want to give too much away, but it was a good and entertaining movie, so you guys go watch it!

Fraiche - Not So Fresh

This is a long overdue post on Fraiche in Culver City, the reason being I wasn't really crazy about it. Disclaimer first, I only went here for an office holiday party, and we had a pre set menu etc, so it may well be I didn't get the representative dishes to convince me that Fraiche was as awesome as I had heard.

It was a three-course menu, and for starters I ordered the beets with goat cheese and pistachios. I have to first say I have heard many many good things about this dish, which was why I ordered it. Upon first glance, the beets weren't as colorful as I am used to. But I won't judge based on that, bright colors may not be everything.
The first few bites of the beets were good and enjoyable, but I could not finish the dish. As I was eating each bite made me feel somewhat ... queasy? It was like the beets were, well, anemic! The beets were a bit bland than I would like, and to top that off with loads of also-rather-bland goat cheese was too much. I stopped eating so I won't feel sick. Is this normal? Or is it one of those let's-give-the-office-party-ppl-second-rate-ingredients?? Maybe it was just us, maybe some people like it way better that way. Dont' know. But no one around my seat finished their beet dish. It was 'good' at first few bites, then 'okay', then on to 'ugh' ...

For the main course I had the duck with black rice. This dish was pretty good but the duck was overcooked and, hence, dry. I did like the black rice though.

I had the chocolate bread pudding for dessert. This was also a bit dry, especially as far as bread puddings go.

The other choice for dessert was the lemon meringue pie. I tried a bit from someone else's plate, but it was way too sweet even for my sweet tooth.

For all the hype I've heard about this place, I was rather disappointed. Is it just because what we got were not as good as a normal Fraiche meal? Tell me, should I go back and give it another try?

Fraiche
9411 Culver Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
(310) 839-6800
http://www.fraicherestaurantla.com