ANNOUNCER: And now, Signature Dish, a WETA original series.

SETH: Today on Signature Dish, we're getting a taste of Korean cooking.

After a masterful take on the traditional...

Here comes the flip.

(laughs) I am impressed.

We'll fire up the grill.

SYLVIA: Okay, Seth, I'm going to introduce you to the best bite that you might've ever had.

SETH: Holy cow.

That is amazing.

And dig in to a reworked Korean favorite.

ANNA: Gonna make a Korean fried chicken today.

SETH: Korean fried chicken, I love it.

But what I'm looking at is definitely not chicken.

Wow.

I'm Seth Tillman, WETA producer and DC native, and I love good food.

That's why I'm traveling to restaurants across the DMV, at each stop, looking for the one thing you just gotta try.

That Signature Dish.

To get this food tour started.

We need to begin, where else?

Annandale, Virginia.

It's here that you'll find the heart of the DC area's Korean community.

The country's third largest, after only Los Angeles and New York.

This Fairfax County neighborhood has legions of small, first-generation run Koran restaurants.

Each restaurant usually has one dish, one staple of Korean cuisine that they do better than anybody else.

And my first stop, Gom Ba Woo, is no exception.

SETH: After settling in Virginia and working for a time as a waitress, Myung-Suk opened Gom Ba Woo in July 2000.

SETH: Myung Suk.

MYUNG-SUK: Hello, how are you?

SETH: I'm good.

Nice to meet you.

MYUNG-SUK: Yes.

Nice to meet you.

SETH: Thank you so much for having me at Gom Ba Woo and uh I see a lot of scallions right here.

What is it that you're making today?

SETH: Yeah I like anything that's in pancake form so that sounds good.

And what kind of seafood is this?

SETH: Well that's great because I love seafood as well so how do you even get started on this?

SETH: So all of these scallions are for one pancake?

SETH: After Myung-Suk finishes slicing the scallions, she cuts some peppers and begins mixing the seafood, spices, and veggies along with eggs and three kinds of flour.

SETH: So you're almost helping kind of release some of those flavors when you mix by hand?

SETH: So this is uh this is more an art than a science?

You kinda do it all by feel.

SETH: Sounds good.

You're not messing around with that flame there.

(sizzling) SETH: Oh that is a nice sizzle.

I'm impressed that you're reaching right into that pan.

So what are you looking for while you cook?

SETH: It becomes so aromatic.

Here comes the flip.

Let's stand back.

(laughs) SETH: I'm impressed.

MYUNG-SUK: Yeah.

SETH: It's so crispy on the bottom.

SETH: I wasn't expecting a second flip.

MYUNG-SUK: Yeah.

SETH: Sounds great.

Myung-Suk this looks so good and it smells incredible.

How do we dig in?

SETH: That sounds amazing.

I'm gonna take a bite.

MYUNG-SUK: Taste good?

SETH: It tastes amazing.

Wow.

MYUNG-SUK: Thank you.

SETH: And I think one of the reasons I love it so much is there's so many ingredients there's not even that room for that much batter.

So it stays nice and light and crispy and not doughy at all.

And cooking it in that hot pan really helped bring out the flavor of those scallions too.

(laughs) There's a lot of them in there too so I think that helped.

But I'm also really curious about all these other dishes that are on the table here too as well.

SETH: All right well I do love Kimchi.

SETH: It's such a nice balance too.

You know this nice sort of hot, rustic pancake but you have all these other flavors and textures that you can go to, to kind of balance your bite.

I really like that.

And it's been just so great to come down to Annandale and just see, you know, this whole Korean community that's been built up here.

How do you kind of uh find a way to set yourself apart with so many other restaurants in the area?

SETH: Well that's so clearly reflected in the food here so thank you for welcoming me into your kitchen here in Annandale and showing me how you put this haemul pajeon together.

It is delicious and uh, as our translator Kay was so kind to teach me, gamsahamnida.

MYUNG-SUK: Gamsahamnida.

♪ ♪ SETH: My next stop takes me even deeper into Virginia.

All the way out to Centreville to visit So Korean BBQ.

'So' which means cow in Korean was started by the same family that opened the ever-popular Kogiya Barbecue in Annandale.

SYLVIA: We opened Kogiya in 2013.

At that time there weren't very many Korean barbecue restaurants so I would get emails on the regular about, "Okay when is your second location opening?"

That location being in Annandale, the original K-town.

There was kind of this movement that was happening simultaneously where Koreatown was moving to Centreville and that was really due to a lot of the mega churches that were moving out of like the Vienna, Arlington, Alexandria area and moving to Centreville, Herndon area.

I grew up in Centreville all my life.

I went to Centreville Elementary.

I went to um Centreville High School.

This is my home-town.

I know all the back roads.

So we opened this location here.

Conceptually we wanted to create a completely different restaurant.

Kogiya is very loud you have a lot of young, like single people that are coming from the city it's kind of like a hub.

Whereas here, we wanted to create a little bit more of like a family kind of like a softer appeal, a little bit nicer I would say.

Because the market here is families, so here we got rid of all the TVs.

No Korean K-Pop music video, no BTS playing.

We wanted to really bring the focus with the people that you have come to dine in with.

I love Korean Barbecue because it's, it's so communal.

You might not be the closest to like the person that's sitting next to you but you are going to share food with them.

And so, we love that, we love big groups.

We love people coming in to have like a heart to heart good time, good food, good conversation.

There's that kind of camaraderie that comes about with Korean barbecue.

Oh hey Seth!

SETH: Hey Sylvia.

Nice to meet you.

SYLVIA: So nice to meet you.

Welcome.

SETH: Well thank you so much, I'm excited about being here.

Glad to make the drive out to Centreville because I do like Korean Barbecue but I always feel like when I have it, I never quite know what to order.

SYLVIA: Well I'm so glad you're here.

Let me go ahead and introduce you to our signature dish, our galbi if you follow me into the kitchen I can show you how it's prepared.

SETH: Let's do it.

SYLVIA: Well Seth, great barbecue starts with great meat and we've caught chef at the perfect time.

This is our signature dish, our galbi.

It's short ribs that we're about to marinate in our soy garlic marinade.

Here uh Chef Choi is actually butchering our short ribs and this is actually a very technical skill it's not something that just anyone can do.

I actually, personally tried it myself and it was horrible it was a mess.

SETH: You need a sharp knife and a lot of years of practice?

SYLVIA: Lots and lots of years of experience for sure.

SETH: So it looks like here your kind of almost uh unfolding the meat.

SYLVIA: Yes.

It's being cut in a way where the full bone is exposed and so this is one of our best cuts of meat, you can see the marbling you know the bright red color the vibrant white that's flowing through it.

It has like a perfect fat to meat ratio where it just melts in your mouth.

SETH: Oh yeah I can see a lot of the nice marbling on the meat right there.

SYLVIA: So the next step after this is that we'll actually soak it in the marinade.

We actually make this three times a week and it's our secret recipe.

It has soy sauce uh sesame oil.

But it also has fruit items that actually helps tenderize the meat and provide a lot of umami and in depth flavor.

Different from what many people might know to be a traditional teriyaki sauce, this is I would say 10 times better than that.

SETH: I'm guessing you already have some of the galbi already marinated and ready to go.

SYLVIA: I do.

It's going to be a great treat for you.

I'm so excited for you to try it.

SETH: That sounds great, let's do it!

SYLVIA: Let's do it!

SETH: Sylvia.

What a spread.

And I see some beautiful marinated galbi right here but I have no idea, how does one even begin to get started here?

SYLVIA: So I'm actually going to go ahead and get this on the grill.

Everyone has their own way of cooking their short ribs so I'm going to go ahead and unravel both and cut them into pieces.

You can tell that we have an open-flame grill here, it's going to have a nice, beautiful charred flavor to it.

I hope you're hungry Seth.

SETH: I am starving.

SYLVIA: All right.

SETH: Oh ho ho listen to that sizzle!

SYLVIA: The sizzle.

So the key here is to cook it evenly.

We're going to actually start with the main part of the short rib.

This is actually going to cook the fastest but it's actually the best part.

We're going to save the bones and the veggies for a little bit later.

And Seth, while this is cooking, I want to introduce you to one of the greatest friends of Korean barbecue.

The booze and the alcohol.

SETH: Gotta have the booze.

SYLVIA: Yes this is absolutely traditional that we have this with Korean barbecue.

I'm going to start off with a nice Korean beer and I am going to give you the perfect proportions of how to make, what we call, somaek.

And somaek is the Korean word soju and the Korean word for beer, maegju put together.

I'm gonna go ahead and pour you my best version of it.

They say that if you get the ratio perfect it's supposed to taste a little bit like honey.

SETH: All right.

So we're just mixing the soju right with the beer.

SYLVIA: Exactly.

This is all about uh an experience.

And then with the beer this is just so boring to just drink this like this.

You know, you and I need to have a little bit of fun here.

So you just hit the bottom here and once it foams up that's when you and I are supposed to drink.

SETH: Hey.

There we go.

Cheers to that.

SYLVIA: Cheers.

SETH: All right I am ready for some meat now.

SYLVIA: Awesome.

Amazing.

The idea is that you're supposed to coat your stomach with the alcohol before the food goes in.

SETH: It's science right?

SYLVIA: It's science.

All right so once we get a nice brown color to it, I'm going to go ahead and cut it into pieces.

SETH: So it's still the outside's nice and charred but the inside still has a little bit longer to go.

SYLVIA: Yes.

SETH: And people shouldn't be afraid to try this themselves right?

SYLVIA: No.

SETH: You don't have to be, You don't have to have years of expertise to give this is a shot.

SYLVIA: Not at all.

Seth, do you want to take over?

SETH: Oh let's let me give this, let me give this a shot.

SYLVIA: I'm going to leave this piece to you.

SETH: All right I do have a whole shot of soju and beer in my system but we'll see.

Cut a few pieces there.

All right now.

SYLVIA: You're a pro!

Are you looking for a job?

Because we're hiring.

SETH: So now do we stir a bit more or?

SYLVIA: Yes.

So we just want to sauté it over the grill so that it has a little bit of like that finish, char, caramelization on the outside.

SETH: All right I feel like my work here is done.

I'm ready now to uh to try some of it.

SYLVIA: Do you want to try some of this?

SETH: Let's give it a shot.

SYLVIA: If you wanna grab your chopsticks and take the first bite.

SETH: Oh look at that caramelization.

SYLVIA: You get that like tenderness of the meat, like the marinade that's just soaked in.

SETH: Holy cow.

That is amazing.

The sweetness too of the marinade and getting those nice little caramelized bits on the outside... SYLVIA: Yes.

SETH: But still having all that fat and marbling on the inside.

That's really amazing.

And I see all these other beautiful sides here.

How do these all play into the barbecue?

SYLVIA: Okay Seth I'm going to introduce you to the best bite that you might have ever had.

You're going to have to use your hands so you might have to put your chopstick down for a second.

SETH: I'm ready.

SYLVIA: Grab a piece of lettuce and then we're actually going to take the pink radish right on the bottom and then a little bit of rice and then we're going to take uh galbi and then you can take a small dollop of the soy bean paste to add a little bit of the umami flavor.

SETH: That is quite the colorful sandwich right there.

SYLVIA: It is.

It's like a sandwich, it's like a taco, it's a lettuce wrap.

Whatever you wanna call it.

SETH: And you just wrap it up and give it a go?

SYLVIA: And you wrap it up and it goes in.

So there's a Korean saying like how big is your mouth or how big can you make lettuce wrap where you can do a one-biter.

SETH: This might be a two-biter we'll see.

SYLVIA: I challenge you.

Get the freshness of the lettuce, the pickled daikon, the sweetness of the meat a little bit of the rice.

It's a mouthful for sure.

There's a lot of Korean jokes about how wide your mouth spreads for you to stuff everything in your mouth.

SETH: I don't know that my mouth was made to handle a lettuce wrap of that size but that was amazing.

SYLVIA: Yeah?

It was, wasn't it?

Well now I'm going to put the rest of the meat on.

This is actually, depending on who you talk to, the most coveted or the least coveted art of the Korean barbecue galbi experience.

And so I'm going to actually put the bones on.

It's going to take a little longer to cook.

It's going to be a little tougher, a lot chewier but some people love it.

They love just gnawing on that tendon and like that fat that's around the bone.

SETH: There's so many preferences involved in this process.

SYLVIA: Absolutely.

The best about Korean barbecue is that uh, there's no rules.

You literally can do whatever you want and we've seen everything under the sun and there's no judgment so, um really it's just you have people that come in here and don't even know that they like galbi and we introduce them to it and they love it.

You have the people that come in here and just want the un-marinated meats, the purists.

SETH: Well so many traditions, so many different preferences.

SYLVIA: There are.

SETH: I haven't had enough Korean barbecue to have any strong preferences of my own so I guess the only solution is to keep coming back?

SYLVIA: Absolutely.

We'd better see you often Seth.

SETH: You will.

This was delicious and also a lot of fun.

Thank you Sylvia.

SYLVIA: Thank you for coming in.

SETH: Now that I've wrapped my visits to Virginia's two Koreatowns, I'm ending my journey across the river in Maryland.

It's here at Takoma Park that you'll find Seoul Food DC which features a veggie-centric take on classic Korean fare.

ANNA: I came here this country 32 years ago.

I was born in Seoul but grew up in Jeonju and Jeonju is best known for its food.

My mom had several restaurants when I was growing up and I grew up basically in the kitchen but I didn't cook at all because I was the youngest kid and my mom never thought I'd be a chef.

When first I came here I slowly feel like I wanna go to the culinary school since I like to open my own shop.

John, my husband, and I decided to open the restaurant but we didn't have much capital so we thought we should start food truck.

We thought it would be very easy.

We had no idea how much money we would have to spend to buy truck, to have a small kitchen, it was lot than we thought.

SETH: After several years running the food truck, Anna and John set up shop in a converted gas station in Wheaton, before finding their permanent home in Takoma Park in 2018.

ANNA: A lot of people think Korean food is related to meat but the basic Korean is offering lots of different vegetable.

The Korea's economy is booming right now but when I was born 1965 we were having a difficulty after the war and we didn't have much meat consumption at the time.

So I was brought up as like a mostly vegan or vegetarian so when we opened up Seoul Food in Takoma Park, John and I we decided to cut down beef and pork.

We had enormous support and we had opportunity to solely develop more vegan and vegetarian food.

To me it's like my mom's bibimbap or my mom's uh the sesame seed stew, that's what it's about the Korean food.

It's just basic but delectable.

SETH: Anna.

Nice to meet you.

ANNA: Nice to meet you Seth.

SETH: This is an absolutely beautiful space.

ANNA: Thank you so much.

SETH: I'm really excited to be here.

Uh what are you making today?

ANNA: Okay we're going to make uh Korean fried chicken today.

SETH: Okay well Korean fried chicken.

I've had that before and I love it uh but what I'm looking at in these bowls is definitely not chicken, uh what is it?

ANNA: That's right.

This is extra firm tofu and we're going to make a Korean fried chicken, plant-based.

SETH: Well plant-based that's definitely a welcome change of pace and I see uh what look like maybe two different types of tofu?

ANNA: These are actually same tofu.

This is fresh tofu.

This is the frozen tofu I thawed.

The reason I freeze, I try to make a tofu is a meat-like consistency.

So when you freeze tofu, the water pocket expands in the freezer so when you squeeze you see how it become porous so the texture is very different from the fresh one.

SETH: That's got to probably help absorb some of the flavors you're putting in as well.

ANNA: That's right.

Mm-hmm.

SETH: So how do you put the rest of the dish together?

ANNA: Okay.

All Korean fried chicken is glazed with the gochujang glaze.

It's a red chili paste.

It's a fermented condiment.

So this is the gochujang.

This is ketchup.

This is some olive oil and this is agave.

And then I'm going to mix it up.

SETH: So you get that nice balance of flavors with the heat from the gochujang paste and the sweetness of the agave.

ANNA: The sweetness uh-huh.

And then the ketchup gives you some acidity too.

SETH: Oh nice.

ANNA: So now our glaze all made.

We're going to fry our Korean fried chicken so just follow me.

SETH: Sounds great.

All right well I see a pot with a lot of hot oil there and it looks like this tofu has already been fried.

ANNA: Yeah in a starch and coconut milk batter.

Breaded in panko and give it a first fry.

SETH: So now you're going to do a second fry with this?

ANNA: Yes.

Let's do it.

SETH: And what does the second fry help do?

ANNA: So I like to have a crisp texture when you have a bite on it and that's the critical part of a Korean fried chicken.

SETH: Right 'cause every time I've had Korean fried chicken it's so much crispier than any American fried chicken I've ever had.

ANNA: That's right.

SETH: So you're just looking to get kind of a nice golden brown on this?

ANNA: We just try to find a right hues, right color.

Okay after let it fry couple more minutes, the final thing we're going to do is, we're going to toss this into the gochujang glaze we made earlier.

And then we're going to drizzle some home-made tahini sauce on top of the dish.

And to finish the dish we're going to plate it with some rice and some pickled daikon, and then we'll be ready to enjoy.

SETH: All right chef, should I put one of these on my plate and just dig in?

ANNA: Yeah, yeah.

When you have a bite, usually you have this one right next to you.

SETH: And this is the pickled radish?

ANNA: The pickled daikon yeah.

How do you like it?

SETH: That is outstanding.

That tofu, I guess it comes from the freezing it and thawing it.

ANNA: Right.

SETH: That really does have a nice, meaty texture to it.

ANNA: People doesn't know if you don't say this is tofu.

SETH: It does have that crunch that you expect with Korean fried chicken.

ANNA: Mm-hmm.

Right.

SETH: And I like too, there's definitely a bit of kick with that uh gochujang glaze as well.

ANNA: Right.

Gochujang glaze, yeah.

SETH: It's nice and spicy.

Going to have a little radish to uh clear my palate before the next bite.

ANNA: Mm-hmm.

SETH: And uh I want to try some of this rice here too.

ANNA: That rice has some crushed seaweed and then crushed sesame seeds which is the most basic thing Korean food has.

SETH: And besides the rice too I see some uh some other beautiful vegetables here.

ANNA: Sure.

I brought some of our kimchi, this is the napa cabbage kimchi, this is the original kimchi and this is the cucumber kimchi.

Many of my customers love it because it has the perfect acidity to clean the palate, especially when you have fried food.

SETH: It's so refreshing too.

ANNA: Mm-hmm.

SETH: And these vegetables, this tofu it feels so appropriate you know walking into this space, I feel like I came into this sort of mini garden of Eden.

ANNA: What I want my customer to feel when they get into our place.

I want them to have a certain serenity and when they go out they think about it, what they can do for our planet.

SETH: And it's fitting too here in Takoma Park because that's kind of the whole energy of the neighborhood right?

ANNA: This couldn't be achieved without our Takoma Park community's help we wouldn't be standing here.

SETH: I have to say chef, when you told me you were making Korean fried chicken with tofu, I was a little bit skeptical.

ANNA: I understand.

SETH: But clearly I had no reason to be.

This was really delicious.

Thank you so much.

ANNA: You too.

Thank you so much.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: To find out more about great food in the Washington Metro Area, Visit weta.org/signature dish