JANG SOO

So I have been in the mood for Korean BBQ for about a two weeks now and I finally decided to satisfy my craving. I ended up at Jang Soo restaurant in Gardena because I knew they had excellent "lunch specials." This place is located at the corner of Redondo Beach Blvd and Normandie. I have been here many times before but have been going less because the prices have gone up. They give you the usual little side dishes so you can snack on it before the main course comes to the table. The little plates consisted of (from L to R) cucumber kimchi (refreshing and crisp, always a treat), bean sprouts (nice nutty flavor), pickled daikon and carrots (the exact same stuff in banh mi sandwiches), steamed broccoli w/slices of mushroom and imitation crab (decent), potato salad (almost like Hawaiian potato mac salad, but with out the mac but with chunks of apples instead, OK maybe not like Hawaiian potato mac then), your usual kimchi (good, not too spicy), soup that came with our meal (it was a spicy broth that had cabbage in it and other things) and fishcake, the star of the bunch (chewy with a nice sweet glaze, it didn't taste like fish at all, shit it might not even be fishcake).

If you order the "lunch specials" here, everything comes out already cooked. They are served on a hot sizzling plate with the type of meat that you ordered with slices of raw onions underneath the meat, so while you eat your meal, the slices of onions gets cooked and becomes soft and flavorful. We ordered (from L to r) marinated BBQ chicken, spicy marinated pork and marinated sliced beef. Everything was marinated to perfection, the chicken was sweet and perfectly cooked. It was charred at the edges, just like all of the meat, so damn good! The pork was spicy, not so spicy where you couldn't taste anything else, but spicy enough to make your nose run just a bit. It was sliced thin and it had such great flavor when you put it in your mouth that you had to close your eyes for a second and just shake your head.
The beef, which is usually my least favorite of the bunch, was da SHIT! Aw-man, this was...I don't know what to say...fucking good! Sorry for the profanity, but I don't know how else to explain this dish to all of you. It was almost like sukiyaki, so soft and juicy. As you can see we totally destroyed the food. They also gave us a tea cup of sweet soup for dessert, which I really never cared for. ~Bootsi

Jang Soo Restaurant

1404 Redondo Beach Blvd

Gardena, CA 90247