Do Hwa Visited 4/21/10 3 Forks

Do Hwa 55 Carmine St(between S 7th Ave & Bedford St), New York, NY 10014

This is my 2nd time here, but 1st time for dinner. The only real reason I ended up at dinner here was b/c VA had a 30% Blackboard Eats discount (thanks!). VA had such high praise for Blackboard Eats that I signed up the next day.

The were 4 of us for dinner, so we decided to split a bunch of dishes. You can sit at either a table with a BBQ set-up or a table with a regular set-up. We were seated at the one with the BBQ set up. But first we each started with cocktails. I got the Ginger Cocktail ($12), which tasted really good until I got to the bottom and then it was really thick and gooey. The other girls at the table got a tea kettle filled with unfiltered sake, which I thought was a cute idea. We started with potato pancakes (there were 2 of them) that was pretty small and I didn't think was that worth the $7. We then got the boiled kimchi/pork dumplings for $9. There were 5 of them and while they were fine, it wasn't anything that I couldn't just buy at the korean supermarket for $10 for a bag of 50 and make myself at home. We then split kimchi, chili pepper, scallion pancake for $9.50. This one was much bigger than the potato pancake and was actually very tasty with the right proportion of scallion. For an entree, we split the crispy chicken tenders ($17), which were indeed super crispy and tasty. It was in a sweet and sour sauce and while there was a crispy coating on it, it wasn't all batter, you could still taste the tender chicken underneath.

We then ended with 2 bbq'd meat, the typical bulgogi ($24) and a spicy pork belly ($21). At first I was worried that it wasn't going to be enough food, but by the time the bbq meats came out, I was starting to get full and there was tons of meat to bbq. It also came with lots of the typical small korean sides, but no bean sprouts! :( The meats were really delicious, but I guess it's hard to get marinated do-it-yourself meats wrong. The pork belly was not to fatty but had the right balance of meat and it went very well with the butter lettuce wraps. With the Blackboard discount, the total meal came out to be $32/pp, which is a pretty good deal considering all the food we had. Given the prices, I think unless you got individual entrees, the bbq is pretty expensive for small parties. If you're going to do bbq, you need at least 3-4 people to make it fun and worth it.