Title: March 6, 2013
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Seoul Gomtang
3801 Telegraph Ave. @40^th St., Oakland, CA
No website/Yelp reviews: http://www.yelp.com/biz/seoul-gomtang-oakland?sort_by=date_desc 
Review date: March 2013

As Carlos and I continue our efforts to find a Korean restaurant that stirs our hearts instead of just sugar-coating our tongues, we stopped in for lunch at this small corner restaurant near the MacArthur BART station. It shares a tiny parking lot with a barber college, although we were fortunate to find a parking on 40^th St. The only entrance is from inside the parking lot, making it appear a bit unfriendly with only windowless walls facing the street sides.

This is one of the rare restaurants where Koreans actually hang out. That's not to say we found the food especially wonderful, because we didn't. However, it was definitely not anywhere near as sugar-laden as Casserole House and Ohgane, which was a nice change. The décor is clean but plain. As there's no windows, they have three flatscreen TVs, two of which are aimed at the parking lot so you can see if anyone's breaking into your car!

Yeah, not the greatest area in Oakland, and especially not at night. Fortunately, we were here for lunch.

Even the mild chile level we received (being obvious newcomers who actually needed to read the short English translations on the menu) has a nice little kick to it. We could have taken the heat up a level, but this is likely one of those places where even Carlos wouldn't go any higher than medium on the chile level. 

The waitstaff speaks excellent English, but all the other customers were speaking Korean. The menu is modest in size. Yelp had a full copy of it, which surprised me: http://www.yelp.com/menu/seoul-gomtang-oakland. 

The ban chan are very simple and few. There were three kimchee: napa, English cucumber, and daikon. They bring a pair of scissors, so you can cut them up as the kitchen pickles them in rather large pieces. The daikon and napa were particularly good, very fresh and tasty. The daikon was the hottest of the three, the napa the mildest.

Carlos ordered the seafood pancake (no surprise there) Hae Mool Pa Jun, and I ordered the steamed dumplings, Jin Man Doo.

The pancake was large. One side is shredded white potatoes, which got nicely crispy in the pan-frying. The usual batter is poured over the potatoes with its many shreds of green onion, green and red bell pepper and a very few pieces of seafood, then flipped over and browned on the other side. The taste is good, and it's only semi-greasy, but the lack of seafood means it isn't a good value. The menu claims "seafood and oysters" but the latter were nowhere to be found. If there was even one shrimp chopped-up in there, I didn't get any in the five pieces I ate. 

The dumplings were, umm....large. Very large. Like gigantic cappelletti, with each one on a piece of cabbage leaf, in a metal steamer. There were six, filled to bursting with a bland filling of what tasted like ground chicken and tofu, seasoned with garlic and green onions, and bound with egg. If this is an appetizer, it's intended for six people, because you couldn't eat more than one of these as a starter. These aren't delicate Chinese har gow or even the meatier xiao lum bao, although the pasta dough is commercially thin. This is the pasta equivalent of a fully hand-sized Cornish pastie, an impressive amount of meat by any Asian standard. Needless to say, we only ate two and brought the rest home as leftovers.

Carlos ordered the Hae Mool Soon Doo Bu, the soft tofu/seafood soup he likes so much. The waitress handed him a raw egg in the shell to add to his soup, which we found amusing after our recent dinner at Ohgane where the waitstaff takes the liberty of smashing it up for you with the ladle. Seoul Gomtang's broth is pretty good but again, there wasn't much seafood to be found except for a couple of shrimps that needed peeling. As a tofu soup it was fine, but as a seafood soup it wasn't up to the competition.

I ordered the Be Bim Bap, although I was tempted by their version of spicy pork teriyaki, the Dae Ji Bul Gogi. It was a little too cold that day to go for the cold noodle dishes. Be Bim Bap is the typical Korean rice bowl, with vegetables and beef. When the waitress brought it out, I noticed the "raw egg" promised on the menu was the usual hard-fried egg, which was disappointing.

To my considerable surprise, everything was served refrigerator cold except for the rice, which was in a separate bowl. It was a nice mix of ground beef; shredded zucchini, daikon and carrots; small fried tofu dice, Chinese black mushrooms, thin shreds of toasted seaweed (nori), and gosari, bracken fern stems. The sauces were separate: a thin soy with slices of green jalapeno chile, and a thick red chile paste that needed to be spooned out. The gojuchang was in a squeeze bottle. 

This dish was my mistake; I should have ordered the Dol Sot Be Bim Bap, which is served in the hot stone bowl. Still, with a little mix of sauces it was a good, refreshing dish. Like everything else here, not the best, but not bad either, and noticeably lower in sugar than the other Korean restaurants we've been to.

Most Yelpers who like this place are those who love the boiled meat soups (Gom Tang). Carlos and I aren't as fond of them, but if we ever return to Seoul Gomtang, maybe we'll give one of those soups a try. We aren't eager to return, but we don't have any real objection to doing so, either. 

Two people, lunch: two starters, two mains, one beverage (a soda), with tip was $58.