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Kunjip and love is like doing crack
Happy Valentines Day! I am quite ambivalent about this holiday, for all the obvious reasons... But in the spirit of the cupids day, I present you with a youtube video (of course), and this one is by Helen Fisher of Rutgers University. She studies romantic love and apparently love is like cocaine (and the video is long, but if you only have four minutes, skip to the 20:00 mark and watch the last four minutes). Fisher says one main characterisitic of romantic love is "intense craving", and when it gets cold I have intense cravings for stews, like soon du bu. Today I present the one from Kunjip from K-town.
The banchan selection was varied and tasty. Somehow I always focus on everything else besides kimchi. Kunjip had a seaweed thing that was mighty tasty. In all they provided perhaps eight different types for sampling.
One of the banchan dish was eggs. It is a very simple dish, comprised of (I think) beaten eggs that are gently cooked til firm. My mom used to do it by steaming the eggs but one can only guess how the restaurant did it. The result is a soft and silky feel to the eggs that warms you in a way that a sunny side up egg never could.
Along with the soon du bu, they give you a bowl of rice. What made the rice special at Kunjip was that it was PURPLE. I first saw this on Robyn's blog. Does anyone know what makes it purple? It tastes pretty much the same but I am just enamored with the color. Purple is exciting when it is the color of your rice.
Kunjip gets packed around dinner time therefore try to go early if you can. I need to go back and try more things, but I definitely recommend the soon du bu which was spicy and did not have too many chewy bits of seafood.
I was talking to the male half of Jere-ann the other day and he lamented about why Korean food was so expensive compared to Chinese food. The value-enjoyment trade-off is definitely greater in Chinatown than in K-town. The economics of it is puzzling. I just want some cheap Korean food! Does anyone know if that exists in the city?
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Oh, and for those of you who like pretty flowers on valentines day, here you go, a peach rose picture, just for you. (But actually my roommate's boyfriend gave it to her, I just stole it to take a picture of it one day... but then I put it back cuz flower stealing is not cool. So look! pretty!
Kun Jip
Address: 9 W 32nd St . New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212-216-9487
MapPosted by Danny on February 14 2008 at 12:23 pm
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This place always has a line whenever I want to go! Must be the purple rice. So I still have never eaten here because I don't want to stand in line.
Ang on February 14 2008 at 12:47 pm
WOO, I love that egg thing!
WOO...PURPLE FOOD...
As for cheap Korean food, I don't think it gets as cheap as Chinese food (or...really cheap Chinese food, rather; it's not always that cheap). As for how Chinese food can be so cheap, I don't know. I'm not sure I want to know. I just eat it. Yes. On that note, I don't think Korean food is all that expensive compared to Chinese food, depending on what you get. Also, you get DELICIOUS BANCHAN!!!
Robyn on February 14 2008 at 3:35 pm
Oh maaans...cheap Korean food exists ALL OVER Hawaii...but alas, I've yet to find cheap and good Korean food here ^__^
Kathy on February 14 2008 at 10:16 pm
The pictures of your soon du bu and banchan are making my mouth water! The purple in the rice comes from a small amount of wild purple rice(about 1 to 20 ratio) that's mixed into the white rice prior to cooking. It doesn't add much flavor, but it's so pretty, isn't it?
Thanks for keeping up the website, I love reading all your reviews!
Carrie on February 16 2008 at 3:06 am
Ang,
Yea that place gets packed every night it seems like. I went around 5:30 and it was easy to get a table. Go early if you do not want to stand in line.
Robyn,
Haha, yea I do not want to know how Chinese food can be so cheap either. Some of the stuff in Chinatown is ridiculous!
Kathy,
Yea that is what my friend says! I told him cheap Korean food does not exist and that is just how the world works, and he tells me it is different in paradise!
Carrie,
Thanks for stopping by Carrie! And also for the information about the wild purple rice, I had no idea they even had that stuff. It is definitely pretty to look at and eat!
Danny on February 17 2008 at 10:39 am
My friends have always raved about Kun Jip and their delicious food so I decided to go try it out with my wife last week. To make a long (excruciatingly painful and humiliating) story short, we were not at all pleased and will NEVER return to this restaurant again. We waited over an hour for our table. I had to repeatedly ask our waiter to bring us our drink orders and our refills. When our waiter finally decided to refill our glass, he spilled most of it into my wife's lap and didn't apologize. They brought us the wrong food and wouldn't change our order. I had to reluctently eat what I never intended to order. Throughout the entire meal, we felt we were being rushed. The waiter kept coming over to our table asking us if we were ready for our bill.
What happened up to this point may seem to be the worst of it, but oh no. No, no, no, no, no. When we paid for our food, I was not very pleased with the service (or the food for that matter) and gave the waiter a 10% tip instead of the usual 25% I would leave. The waiter was bold enough to come over to our table and asked that we increase his gratuity to at least 20%. My wife and I tried to explain to him that although we were not very happy with the food, we understand that we still have to pay. However, we were completely, totally, and utterly dissatisfied with the service of the staff at Kun Jip and I refused to increase their tip. In the end, my wife threw down a five dollar bill just so the waiter
John Michaels on May 8 2008 at 2:20 pm