Skip to main contentI've just had two of the most extraordinary and spectacular meals in months at a brilliant new Korean restaurant called BeWon.
Korean cooking is the hidden Asian cuisine--I suspect most lovers of Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian and Chinese cooking will, except for kimchi, draw a blank when it comes to Korea's national dishes. North Korea may be forced into meager rations, but BeWon's elegant, stylishly cool setting and effortlessly gracious service provide lavish evidence of the peninsula's rich culinary traditions. Plate after plate offers ambrosial and explosive flavors and dazzling surprises that take you to culinary nirvana.
The restaurant, on Northwest 23rd Avenue, is far enough from the hectic action. With its gray tile floor, soft yellow walls, gorgeous sepia photographs of Korean artifacts, the ambience is calming. And the waiters look as if they belong in Tribeca--beautiful Korean-Americans who are at once super-hip and eminently respectful of their heritage. They are learned in the ways of their country's cooking and will subtly rhapsodize about the ingredients.
Korean menus are studded with richly braised meats, bubbling stews and casseroles, broiled and barbecued fish, pungent soups and pancakes crammed with vegetables and seafood. The variety of cooking styles and the range of flavors are impressive, and a harmonious meal demands you try examples of all the types. This is cuisine for the adventurous--an exciting game that, if you play it to the hilt, will lead to audacious revelry.
You might begin with acorn jelly ($8.95), a slab of gelatinous heaven somewhat like jellyfish in texture, tossed in a "salad" of green peppers, green onions and a soy-and-sesame dressing. This gets your juices flowing and ready for a delicious soup called su je bi ($4.95) crammed with vegetables and chunks of steamed fresh dough that are something like flattened, chewy ravioli. Two other appetizers are superb: One is a mound of slurpable sweet-potato noodles ($6.95) served at room temperature, peppered with onions, scallions, sprouts, and pork; the other is a crêpelike pancake laden with mushrooms, peppers, shrimp and squid ($8.95).
All these items are relatively mild, but they set you up for the sizzle of the main dishes. Korean food is never hot for its own sake; rather, the ubiquitous chili and pepper pastes are perfectly blended with the other ingredients, and the heat travels deep down, warming your whole body, rather than simply clearing nasal passages or blistering tongues.
Kimchi stew ($11.95), a witch's flame-red brew of fermented cabbage, tofu and pork, arrives in a black pot and may be ladled onto your bowl of rice to cut the torridity. A marvelous mound of stir-fried baby octopus with vegetables ($15.95) is peppery and provocative, but never intolerable. Each dish labeled as "blended red-pepper-paste sauce" has a unique taste, some more redolent of ginger and garlic, others more of sesame and cayenne. A remarkable marinated soft-shelled crab in chili sauce ($15.95) arrives cold, the entire shell almost edible though not quite so soft as the Chesapeake Bay or the Japanese deep-fried varieties. Short ribs ($18.95) that have been marinated but come without sauce dripping from the meat represent a milder treat packed with a smoky, almost-sweet flavor; they're infinitely better than anything dreamed by American BBQ mavens.
Accompanying the entrees is a cluster of 10 side dishes, something like Korean tapas, many of which change night to night. It's fun to work your way down the line, sampling the spectrum of flavors from salty to sour to sweet. The excitement builds, and you'll find yourself urging your tablemates to taste and talk about it. There's dried squid in chili sauce, mushrooms and seaweed, three varieties of kimchi (there are some 160 kinds in all!), beef flank marinated in chili garlic, oysters in hot sauce, pan-fried vegetables with thin slices of winter melon, a kind of frittata of seafood, shavings of a root (something like burdock) and, most wonderful of all, chips made from kelp that have been sprinkled with sugar while the ocean salt still clings on to create a complex sensation. And if you love any of these little plates, your waiter will gladly refill them.
Chilled Korean rice wine marries well with this food. It's less astringent than Japanese sake, has a slightly plummy taste, and hints of the anise, ginger and ginseng with which it's distilled. Otherwise, Korean beer's the ticket.
The restaurant brings in many of its ingredients directly from Korea. But if the recent dock strike kept a few spices at bay, nothing has restrained BeWon's volcanic energy, for the place has also imported an ineffable generosity of spirit that makes dining there a rare pleasure.
1203 NW 23rd Ave., 464-9222. 11 am-3 pm and 5-10 pm Monday- Saturday. Credit cards accepted. Children welcome but seldom seen. $$ Moderate.
Sweet-potato noodles, acorn jelly, short ribs, pork in red-pepper paste, stir-fried octopus, kimchi stew.
Elegant service, stunning presentations, generous spirit.
The name refers to a secret garden nestled deep in the ancient palace where the Korean royal family once retreated for celebratory feasts.
WWeek 2015