If you've never been to Koreatown, I highly recommend you check out Pocha 32 first as it is the embodiment of everything that is awesome about K-town. The location is a bit hard to find - it's on the 2nd floor of a nondescript building. But when you do find it, it's crazy. The inside is like a weird spaceship - it's got green fishnets hanging from the ceiling and chopstick wrappers all over the wall. It's dark and got christmas lights all over the place - it's definitely got a fun late night vibe to it. I've never been to Korea but some of the reviews I read about this place mentioned that it's super authentic to what you would find in Seoul.
The menu is all over the place - it's pages and pages long with all sort of of soup/stews, stir fried dishes, grilled dishes, fried dishes, noodle dishes, rice dishes, and then other random side dishes. We got the Boodae Jungol ($30), the grilled BBQ beef ($27) and the fried chicken ($24), while Amy got a veggie bibimpop ($14). But the star of the show was the watermelon soju ($30) - this is their famous drink of a half cut watermelon filled with soju, watermelon puree, and sprite. It honestly tastes like fruit punch and even though we drank the entire thing, I didn't feel drunk at all but it's definitely a fun drink to have.
The food was all pretty traditional and authentic. The boodae jungol is a dish made famous during the Korean war when people didn't have a lot of ingredients to make dinner so they just threw whatever they had into a stew - this one had kimchi, spam, cut up hot dogs, pork, ramen noodles, rice cakes, mushrooms, and associated veggies in a spicy broth and then covered with cheese on top. Yes - you read that all correctly, these ingredients were all in 1 giant bubbly dish. It's crazy and not as weird or gross as it sounds. It was just hard to eat because there was so much going on in the dish. But if you aren't afraid to try weird dishes, this is a fun one to try although I wouldn't necessarily say it's a culinary wonder. The grilled beef was good - it was served on a net grill with some vegetables but I actually thought it was a bit cold? It wasn't sizzling as I would expect it to be - it was almost like they had grilled a bunch of meat in the back and put it on the net when we ordered it. The fried chicken was good but but we got the non-spicy kind and it could have used a bit of heat to it as the regular version was a bit bland. It did also come with fries, which were surprisingly crispy and delicious.
Overall, it was a really fun outing and I've heard that late at night there are huge lines to get it. While we were there, someone had a birthday and they turn down the lights and blared super loud Happy Birthday music, which seems like the appropriate thing here. While the food isn't necessarily out of this world, the decor and experience are. Total bill: $41 with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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