En Hakkore Visited 1/12/2015 4.5 Forks

En Hakkore 1840 N Damen Ave., Chicago, IL 60647

I have passed this place by Deanna's apt a million times and always wanted to try it but there was always some other place to go in the city and this place is more like a casual take out place than a sit down restaurant, so we never end up there.  But I was working from home that day (it's just not MY home) and thought it was the perfect opportunity to give it a try. 

The menu is Korean with some slight twists - they have several versions of bibim bap, korean tacos and sushi.  Everything looked and sounded amazing but I landed on the sashimi bibim bap because it was described as having 13 different kinds of vegetables and 5 kinds of sashimi for $12!  I have never seen a sashimi version and it's a combination of 2 of my favorite kinds of food, so I had to try it out. I also got an order of the mini steamed dumplings ($5).  I forget how price friendly good food can be in other cities outside of NYC.  The service was very nice - the owner asked if I minded my food spicy and I asked how spicy was it and she gave me a taste of their chili sauce which turned out not to be too bad, so she gave it to me on the side in case I changed my mind.  

I started with the dumplings and they were very fresh looking.  You could tell that they weren't frozen and I loved that the skin was very thin and not too chewy.  The dumplings were stuffed with pork and vegetable and covered with spring onion, sesame, and served with a delicious sweet soy sauce.  Great start to the meal.  The bimbim bap was HUGE - a very large order for $12 and it indeed came with plenty of vegetables and sashimi.  I got it with brown rice and the vegetables included were spring mix of lettuce, chopped purple cabbage, regular cabbage, cilantro, daikon sprouts, cucumber, red and yellow paprika, carrots, beets, and pickled radish and the fish included tuna, salmon, white tuna, tilapia and shrimp. Heaven.  The chili sauce was a sweet and only slight spicy, so a great addition to the dish. The only compliant would be that the sashimi was cut into kind of small cubes, I would have liked them to be bigger pieces as sometimes I couldn't really tell what  fish I was eating.  But I really loved this bibim bap and wished my local Korean fusion place had this option.   Now that I know how great this place is, I totally know where I am going for lunch when I work out of my 2nd home of Chicago.  Total bill:  $20  

Photo Credit:  Yelp