OnDal 2

Sorry for being MIA, I was in Los Angeles for the new year. And boy, was there a lot of eating! I'll start with my favorite meal and sort of work backwards. We met up with some college friends at OnDal 2 as a spur of the moment decision. None of us had ever heard of it, but we're definitely all planning to return. This is definitely one of the most unique and worthwhile Korean restaurants in Ktown, in my opinion. And unlike a lot of places that are cheap and decent, this is a place that has good enough quality that I'd take parents.

First of all, the panchan were all delicious and some were a bit unique. I especially liked the little fish tempura nuggets and toasted seaweed (which tasted delicious with everything). I missed photographing the crispy vegetable pancake and grilled fish, but both were excellent.

At OnDal2, the menu is comprised of about a dozen choices of stew. You pick a stew and a size. Our table got a large spicy crab and a medium beef (above). The beef came with rice cakes in it, which I love.

The star of the meal, and what almost every table gets, is the spicy crab stew (#2 on the menu). Can't blame them; the crab flavor in the soup is deliciously intense. Sometimes, Korean restaurants coast by simply making their food spicy. At OnDal 2, there's actually flavor to back it up.

Once the pot is presented to your table, a server scrapes out most of the eggs from the shell and cuts and cracks each crab into manageable pieces. Some of the shells are stuffed with a mix of chicken and crab egg before the stew's made, so there's kind of an eggy cake that's also mixed into the stew. Rice is scooped into each shell, topped with the stew and plenty of bean sprouts, and served.

We skipped the second preparation because were were already half full after appetizers! The second preparation is hand ripped noodles. We saw the servers preparing it at other tables: basically they flatten and rip off thin chewy rounds of dough right at the table. It looked delicious, but we had to pass and go straight for the fried rice. The pot is emptied, the rice is mixed in with seaweed, chili paste, and a light brown powder none of us could identify. some of the crab liquid is added back in for flavor, and the rest packed up to go while the rice is enjoyed by all.