Westborough Korean Restaurant
by Katya Simkhovich
After three hours of perusing bookmarks, a yoga class, and some ransacking of cookbooks I finally decided I wanted Korean food. And that I didn’t feel like cooking. So it was decided. My father and I were to go to that little Korean restaurant nestled between an intersection and a bank near the center of Westborough, MA. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and probably again in the future), but there is something so marvelously unpretentious about your typical asian restaurant. The decor is cheap, the menus are laminated pieces of paper, and the food is cheap (and just plain delicious).
Faster than we could sit down in the red vinyl booths we were welcomed by hot cups of tea that chased away the chilly evening air.
This particular restaurant was empty save for a couple of booths when we arrived for dinner but it quickly filled and by the time we were eating our bi bim bap it was filled with asians and asian food lovers alike. You know an asian place is good when it’s frequented by a majority of asians. Fact.
You also know it’s good when the food tastes like something your mother would make (if you were korean). Which is exactly what I envisioned when I took my first bite of the vegetable scallion pancake.
It only got better with the 12 complimentary tasting bowls of assorted korean goodies.
And as if we weren’t warm enough from the piping hot scallion pancake and tea, out came our sizzling dol sot bi bim baps.
crispy crackly rice
The unabashed sizzling of the pot was a fair warning to the heat of the contents inside. And when the waitress offered us the hot sauce that is customarily added and mixed in, I silently thought “as if I’m not already going to burn off at least half my taste buds?” However, if you heed the sizzling warning carefully you can end up slowly enjoying a marvelously fulling and light meal. The rice that lines the hot pot turns into crispy, browned clumps of crunchy rice. The tofu is a pleasantly just firm enough that it when you first go to grab it with your chopsticks it falls apart into pieces but when you go for those pieces they hold up just long enough to make it to your mouth. The veggies were prepared in the fantastically delicious way characteristic of asian cooking.
And for what I can’t say in words:
I show in pictures.
I <3 westborough korean. The seafood pancake is awesome (I forgot, but I think you're vegetarian?) as is the kimchi jigae. If you go around lunar or rest-of-the-world new year, they offer a complimentary glutinous rice, sweet dumpling dessert
Yay thanks for the advice nick! And I’m a “flexitarian” – so I can make exceptions here and there…