For weeks, I’ve had open-ended plans to join my friend Tai for dinner in Koreatown. He grew up in South Korea and has some serious food knowledge, so not only did I know I’d have a good time, but I figured I’d eat well and probably even learn something. Koreatown contains hundreds of dining options, but we decided on Sa Rit Gol, Kyung Hah’s Korean restaurant with a lengthy comfort food menu that resides in the back corner of a strip mall. In Korea, a Sa Rit Gol is a traditional country house.

Our booth near the entrance was fronted by traditional woven Korean shoes and baskets. The space holds less than a dozen tables, primarily booths, plus a private dining room that features low tables with traditional floor seating. The extra room is primarily used for private parties and special occasions.

Sa Rit Gol has a reputation for offering excellent panchan, the array of complimentary dishes that always includes kimchi, chile-slathered fermented cabbage. Kimchi is pictured on the bottom right, alongside bean sprouts seasoned with chile sauce, carrots, scallions and light sesame oil; and slices of sautéed zucchini with tiny shrimp so small they practically require a microscope. The middle row features, left to right, warm lettuce roots, dried in winter, boiled in spring and marinated with pungent anchovy sauce; tiny chile-slathered cucumbers and garlic cloves; and quarter-inch-thick slabs of fried tofu partially submerged in soy sauce. The top row consisted of ruffled slabs of white acorn gelatin with garlic vinaigrette and subtly fermented greens and cucumbers, another form of kimchi. As advertised, Sa Rit Gol delivered impressive panchan.

After spotting this dish on another table, we ordered spicy marinated pork belly ($18.99), slathered in chile sauce, cooked with carrot discs, onions and sheets of kimchi. Pork belly is basically thick-cut bacon, and it’s rarely been as good as it was at Sa Rit Gol, where it offered an addictive chile kick.

According to Tai, savory pancakes are popular at Korean restaurants. Sa Rit Gol offers a mung bean version with pork, but we opted for this foot-across disc loaded with scallions and tender strips of white cuttlefish ($15.99), a cephalopod in the squid family. The pancake’s consistency was incredible, crisp and browned on the outside and almost velvety within.

This bubbling cauldron of spicy black cod & vegetables soup ($29.99) was boiled on our tabletop grill, loaded with herbs and sprouts. There were two massive cross-sections of cod tossed into the supercharged soup, each about six inches long, four inches across and three inches thick. As the soup cooked, luscious sheets of cod soaked up the spices and pulled free from the skin and bone with a tap from my chopsticks.

Here’s a close-up of my bowl of soup, featuring flaky chunks of cod meat. Notice the tiny bones. This was a dish that required technical use of chopsticks, but it was worth the effort.

As expected, Sa Rit Gol was a positive experience on many levels. I’ve eaten at dozens of Korean restaurants in Los Angeles, but thanks to Tai and his friend Matthew, I learned fresh information about Korean cuisine. The food was also in the upper tier of the neighborhood’s Korean restaurants. I’m excited to return and eat my way through the rest of the enticing menu.

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This entry is filed under California, Eastside, Korean, Los Angeles, Southern California.