From a distance, it looks like a school bus has crashed onto the sidewalk at the 1400 block of L Street.
Instead of kids, the yellow box on wheels contains Korean bulgogi hawkers: Andy, who also happens to be an internationally competitive taekwondo master, and his mother, Yong Sun. The food is fresh-tasting and cheap, the service fast and friendly, the name straightforward: The Bulgogi Cart.
An establishment like this seems out of place, not just because its scaled-down simplicity is plunked down so close to the fat-pocketed lobbying firms of D.C.'s Wall Street. The Bulgogi Cart is also one of very few Korean food purveyors in all of downtown D.C.
On its face, the scarcity of Korean joints doesn't make sense; it's not exactly like Washingtonians are scared of ethnic restaurants. The Post's online Going Out Guide lists at least 12 places to go downtown for Indian, Thai, and Ethiopian. But the only Korean restaurant options are Yee Hwa on 21st Street and Mandu in Dupont, and a couple of mobile kitchens: the Bulgogi Cart, and, just a block away, the Korean Food Cart.
When it comes to setting up chopsticks downtown, most Korean restaurantrepreneurs don't see the point. Why take your chances with caucasian neophobes - and pay about $26 more per square foot of retail space - when you can just join the Korea lovefest that is Annandale, Virginia. Annandale is home to 66,000 Koreans and 929 businesses catering to Koreans - one-third of all Korean businesses in the Washington Metropolitan area.
All the better for the Bulgogi Cart, which faces little competition for the niche of Korean-craving lobbyists who can't make the lunch excursion to Annadale, chained as they are within the city limits by all those check-signing appointments at the Hart Senate Office Building.
For just seven bucks, any of the tasty options below can be yours:
Bimbimbap with Spicy Bulgogi - Far be it for me to question food that looks and tastes this good, but why do they serve it in a box with a divider between the meat and the vegetables? Bimbimbap means "mixed rice," but the styrofoam wall prevents mingling. The spicy sauce is appealing but masks that garlic/soy punch that lovers of traditional bulgogi long for.
Spicy Chicken - The Cart is named after the bulgogi, but you should also get their chicken, which is seriously tender. I challenge restaurants like Yee Hwa with a full-sized kitchen to nail chicken like this. I also challenge Yee-Hwa to remove the "w" from its name and offer all patrons cowboy hats at the door.
Mix of chicken and bulgogi without the spicy sauce - Every last piece of the chicken was plump and meaty. I also go ga-ga for the bulgogi because of its texture. I'd use a sweeter bulgogi marinade, though.
interesting subject---the korean food cart, not the predatory fat cats you mention, each with the obligatory american flag stick pin on his chest. really good pix, too.
ReplyDeleteThis was the funniest line: I challenge restaurants like Yee-Hwa with a full-sized kitchen to nail chicken like this. Interesting that there are so few Korean places in DC. I like the writing.
ReplyDeleteThis lunch cart impresses. How did you have the room to eat all three dishes for lunch? Oh yeah....it's the bottomless pit wonder that is Matt!
ReplyDeleteNot to tarnish my reputation as a bottomless pit, but I needed two different lunches to take down all three. Still, a fairly respectable eating achievement given the size of the servings.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that the street food vendor rules are about to change and we may get more ethnic carts like this (thank Goodness!)
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome. I heard there's another Korean food cart (it's actually called Korean Food Cart) right around the corner from the place I went to on L Street.
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