O-bok Restaurant

Where: 8600 South Tacoma Way, Lakewood, 253.582.6713

Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday,11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Cuisine:  Traditional home style Korean 

Scene: Casual, cozy, and family friendly with tabletop barbecue

Drinkies: Beer and wine, tea, soda

Prices: $7.95-$27.95. Most dishes over $20 serve two.

ANNOUNCER: A bit of mystery surrounds Lakewood's Koreatown on South Tacoma Way. Many stores lacking any English signage are found in what's officially Lakewood's International District. Between 84th and 96th streets the area may remind one more of Sacramento or Los Angeles than Pierce County. Gems are hidden here, however, and the inability to read or speak Korean or other Asian languages can be an unfortunate deterrent to discovering them. O-bok Restaurant is just such a gem and has been open since 1989 on "South Korea Way" - as one sign in Korean refers to it inside. Restaurant pioneer, owner and cook Sun Ok Chung makes the grub just like she has for the past 20 years, serving home-style traditional Korean dishes.

JAKE: It smells like barbecue in O-bok. Not like Tennessee tangy barbecue kind of barbecue, but the very primal one that only animal flesh being sizzled into meat candy gives off. Mmmmmm. Good.

JASON: Tabletop barbecue will do that. O-bok was first in the area, you know. Like at Flying Tomato in Graham, we settled on a combination meal serving two people to try many things at once - a steal at $27.95. We matched the Korean words to other areas in the menu that had English descriptions in order to figure out we'd be getting an entire fish, stew, pot stickers, a fish stir-fry, and a beef dish. Oh, and white rice and banchan - a great aspect of Korean food are these many little bowls of goodies.

JAKE: At the suggestion of our server, we'd already ordered rice cake and dumpling soup. I usually think of rice cakes as crisp and crunchy, but not in Korean dishes. To my understanding this is condensed, cooked down rice formed into a semi firm oblong cake. After it firms up, sliced pieces are added to the soup. Interesting in texture and rather chewy, it stuck to my teeth. Dumplings and veggies were soft and delicious. Mild broth meant individual seasoning; mine saw red pepper paste and soy sauce. Our giant, long handled silver soup spoons came with their own dust covers. Banchan arrived: surprisingly mild, deep red kimchi; sweet and nutty soy beans; carrot and sweet potato; grated radish; and mung beans in oil.

JASON: I couldn't get over the pickled hot dog cut into long strips that was served as part of banchan. I find it interesting how cultures borrow and adapt certain things. One bowl held something similar to macaroni salad, but it  had fruit too.

JAKE: Whole pan-fried flounder was crisp outside, had soft flesh inside and a fantastic salty flavor. Kun mahndoo - pan-fried beef pot stickers - were meaty. Beef bulgoki was simmered in a sweet, spicy hot sauce with white onions served on a piping hot skillet. Cuttlefish are in the squid/octopus family, complete with tentacles and suckers. All parts are used and stir-fried with thickly sliced carrot, onion, white cabbage, and green peppers in ohjinguh bokum. It was really hot. Jason was thrilled and ate most of it. I drank a lot of water and then focused on the bulgoki.  To be honest, I felt like a winner for even trying the cuttlefish dish. I can't tell you how creeped out I am by the appearance of live cuttlefish.

JASON: Dwaenjahng jihgae - a stone pot stew of soy bean paste, long ribbons of semi- soft tofu and veggies - was cloudy, reddish and full of salty goodness. We just weren't adventurous enough for dishes such as haejangguk, a spicy short rib, vegetable, tripe, and coagulated beef blood stew - or sundaeguk, a homemade blood sausage stew made with ground beef and tofu in pork intestine.

JAKE: I want to order those things one day, but I'm afraid my cojones just aren't there yet. Does that make me less of a man?

JASON: No, but other things do.