Chinabites

Posted: Mar. 22, 2009

I've never been to Korea to partake of authentic Korean cuisine in its natural habitat. I have, however, lived for many years in a heavily Korean neighborhood in Beijing. It was there I learned to first tolerate, subsequently love, and finally crave Korean food, becoming familiar with a few of its representative dishes along the way. I challenge you to find a colder, frostier Yanjing beer than you'll get at Pusan BBQ in Wudaokou. It's been almost a year since I was resident in Beijing, and at least that long since I had any authentic Korean food (with apologies to Korea Garden in Madison Heights, Virgina a.k.a. Hogtown, a.k.a. the Dirty Heights). So it was with relish that I had my first Korean meal in Hong Kong last night at Changwon Korean Restaurant in Causeway Bay.

Changwon is a Korean barbecue restaurant. Every table is furnished with a gas grill on which to cook the marinated raw pork, beef, and squid dishes which are the restaurant's specialty. Vegetarians fear not, however, there's still plenty on this menu that you don't have to kill or inconvenience an animal to enjoy. There were two vegetarians in the group I dined with, so we got more than our fair share of veggie dishes including the spicy tofu soup, glass noodles, kimchi flatbread, kimchi fried rice, and, oh yes, kimchi. One particularly surprising treat was a cold eggplant appetizer that I had never seen at any other Korean restaurant.

The meat, normally the main event at a Korean BBQ restaurant, took on more of an auxiliary role in this particular meal. We had marinated beef and thick, quarter-inch slices of bacon, which were particularly heavy on the fat, shown stretched out below in all their glory on the Korean BBQ.

Changwon was a very decent Korean meal that was at least on par with any other Korean restaurant I've eaten at in China. It was, like everything else in Hong Kong, slightly pricier than its mainland counterparts, but quality did not suffer and the service was extremely friendly and attentive. Changwon is a restaurant best enjoyed with a group of three or more to get a wider selection of the delicious and free appetizers.