The site of trays upon trays of mandoo, ready to be cooked up and eaten, greets everyone entering this small restaurant on 32nd Street, heart of Koreatown. I would learn later that the green were veggie mandoo, the white regular (pork and seasonings), and the orange, seafood. But… more on that later.
Cookie and I have tried a few times to go here, starting off with our various shopping in the area nearby, and invariably ending up with us hungry and deciding to walk over to Koreaton for grub. Since I first told her about Mandoo Bar, she’s wanted to go try, but the few times in the past, the line extended out the door, making us uninterested in waiting for a table. Finally, one recent weekday, the line was only 3 people ahead of us, so we gamely waited for a table to free up. Since it was just two of us, the wait really didn’t take that long, although while we waited, several different groups entered behind us, complained about the wait, and left to go elsewhere.
We were so happy we decided to wait…
***Forgive the picture quality, the lighting was really odd in there; we sat by the door, and the light source was directly behind me, so my shadow was cast over everything.
We were started off with some fairly standard banchan, pickled spicy radish and pickled daikon radish.
After much debate over the menu, and the waiter telling us three times that we ordered a lot of food, and us insisting it was fine (we’d just take it home), we chose our meal and watched it unfold before us.
Cookie’s appetizer of fried veggie mandoo. The texture was interesting, not quite like fried dumplings but then, familiar. I wasn’t a big fan of what was inside the veggie mandoo though. $3.95
My combo platter of mandoo, seafood, veggie, and regular/pork. I think these were boiled. I took one bite of the regular mandoo and fell in love. I have limited experience with mandoo, but I just loved the combination of flavors and seasonings, it was just the right mix for me. Juicy and tasty… succulent… YUM!
The inside. I think that was leek- maybe chives?- inside… so good. I love Chinese dumplings with pork and leek too (or pork and cabbage; cabbage gives it that extra juiciness). YUMMY.
I was especially impressed to discover real crab meat inside the seafood mandoo. This was also very tasty, and I would definitely order these again.
I definitely liked these the least. I found them unimaginative and quite bland… needed dipping sauce or something (none of the others needed dipping sauce).
… and the sole reason we’d gone to Mandoo Bar to begin with. A long while back, someone told me that Mandoo bar had kimchi mandoo. (Spicy pickled cabbage dumplings) It didn’t appeal to me at the time, but after a long couple of months where I’ve been trying to increase my Korean food knowledge and dishes I like/have tried, I decided it sounded pretty darn good actually. Also, in this time, I discovered that if you boil kimchi, the spiciness obviously dies down a bit, dissipates but then goes into the other items in the same dish, making them more powerfully flavored. Which is good. So I wanted to try these, thinking they’d be this wonderfully delicious yummm.
UNFORTUNATELY… the waiter said we couldn’t substitute the seafood mandoo in my combo platter for these (boo… but I’m glad, in the end, since I liked the seafood ones so much), so we had to order an entire separate order. Even worse was discovering they had pork in them, leaving it up to me to eat the entire order since Cookie is a vegetarian. Boo.
Ah well… I dug in eagerly, but was disappointed to find that they were only alright. The spiciness was still very much intact, but the crunch of the cabbage was all but gone, and just… not quite as delicious as I’d hoped they’d be. I did eat quite a lot of them, but I vastly preferred the pork and/or seafood mandoo to the kimchi ones.
Cookie also ordered a soon dubu soup thingee, tofu or something, super spicy as you can see from the color. I know she enjoyed it and finished it happily. I didn’t try any.
To cap off our meal, we opted to split a joll noodle, which said it was spicy but I said “Hey, I’ve eaten ddukbogi and been okay, let’s do it” but unfortunately, my being courteous was not rewarded. I stirred up the noodles with the supplied tongs, and the spicy paste was coating everything, such that stupid me took one bite and began crying. I ate the tiniest bit before I had to stop, which was okay in the end anyway since I was really stuffed from eating so many mandoo (I did wind up taking half the kimchi ones home, along with one each of the combo plate). Cookie only had a little of the joll noodles as well, before we packed everything off to go.
I did appreciate that the guy packing our food asked us if we wanted two separate bags or if we wanted it all in the same bag, understanding that a lot of people who eat together don’t live together. Our waiter had also been most helpful when we’d been ordering, telling us that we really were ordering a TON of food, but it was what we wanted, so. In the end, our bill came out to about $25 a person, with a generous tip, which, considering how much we ordered and how stuffed we were, and the location, wasn’t too bad.
Yvo says: I will definitely be going back, but ordering smarter next time so it’ll be a bit cheaper, and a bit less to carry home. Oh, and so I don’t cry from how spicy the items are. I really liked my mandoo and have recommended this place to BF (who LOVES gyoza, but I’m not sure he’ll like these if only because the skin is sooo much thicker, the exact opposite of gyoza), who works in the area. If there’s a short line, it’s not a bad place to go, but I admit that if there’s a long line, I’ll still opt to go elsewhere.
recommended
Leave a Reply