N. Korean Dumpling Restaurant next to Han Ah Reum

[Rachel Perlow]

Frankly, I don't know if "Dumpling" is the name of the restaurant. The English part of their business card just says "Korean Restaurant" (well, that and the address), the rest is in Korean.

Even though Korean dumplings (a.k.a. mandoo, imagine very flavorful kreplach, if you are so inclined) are their specialty, they have a full menu, and the barbecue grills at the tables. Tonight, however, we concentrated on the mandoo. Wow. Really. Wow!

They have mandoo available in several varieties and preparations. We sampled two different soups, plain fried beef mandoo, and stir-fried beef mandoo with vegetables. All were delicious. The soups were meals in themselves. Jason and Jon shared a soup called Large Kimchee Dumpling Soup (or something like that). At first we thought it would be an extra large soup, but it was the same size as my Beef Dumpling Soup with Rice Cake. What was large about it was the size of the mandoo - they were about twice the size as all the others. They enjoyed their soup and I'll let them tell you about it - since I don't care for kimchee in general, I didn't care for the soup. My soup however, was fabulous. Just the thing to hit the spot, since I'm incubating a cold.

But to backtrack. Our meal started, as it usually does in Korean restaurants, with a variety of pan chan. It was a better than average assortment, which improved in our minds as the empty bowls were replaced with lightening speed by the friendly (and mostly bi-lingual) staff. At other places, we've had to catch a server's attention and ask for extras, not so here. They also didn't seem shocked that we knew about the cuisine and didn't ask a lot of questions. A quick look around the restaurant confirmed our suspicions that they get lots of non-Korean patrons (but plenty of Korean ones too). The demographic seems to follow that of the neighboring Han Ah Reum supermarket.

While the pan-fried mandoo were nearly perfect, it was the stir-fired mandoo with vegetables that was our unanimous favorite. Zucchini, carrots, snow peas and other julienned vegetables accompanied by fried mandoo were stir-fried together with a mildly-hot Korean bean paste sauce. It was a revelation about the way a humble dumpling can be elevated.

Not only do we plan to return to sample other kinds of dumplings, but the barbecue as well. The other tables surrounding us were having a grand time, and they seem to have a few kinds of BBQ that we haven't experienced at other Korean restaurants. We look forward to our return.

Korean Dumpling & BBQ Restaurant

Han Ah Reum Shopping Center

321 Broad Avenue

Ridgefield, NJ 07657

201-941-7711

[Double 0]

In that same shopping center is a "Chinese" restaurant that has homemade noodles with a variety of sauces. I don't rember the name (before Eg) and I only had one dish (lunch). From that one dish I would say it's worth a try.

[Rachel Perlow]

I think that would be King's Noodles.

[ngatti]

In that same shopping center is a  "Chinese" restaurant that has homemade noodles with a variety of sauces. I don't rember the name (before Eg) and I only had one dish (lunch). From that one dish I would say it's worth a try.

Double Nought,

I've been reading your food posts with great interest. You are truly North Jersey's answer to the Underground Gourmet. You have the good cheap eats thing *down*,

Impressive

Nick

[spronjulator]

Kings Noodles is excellent. The homestyle tofu dish is soooo yummy that I can't stop eating it once I start. Also, either noodles or their fried rice with brown sauce on top (they're well known for their brown sauce) is also most excellent. This is one of my favorite places around of its type...and the price is almost impossible to beat given the taste.

I'm looking for other similar restaurants of the same caliber and price a little closer to Edgewater. Anyone know of any?

[jhlurie]

Went back to "Dumpling Restaurant next to Han Ah Reum" with some other people and it held up.

New items tried include

-Kimchee Dumplings, Stir Fry style.

-Donkatsu (they seem to spell it with a D instead of a T)

The Kimchee Dumplings were pretty much a mix of how Rachel describes the Beef Dumpling Stir Fry above and the Kimchee Dumpling Soup, minus the soup. Large dumplings--about two and a half times the size of the small ones--with a mixture of Beef and Kimchee inside. Tossed into a wok and fried in a spicy sauce with some simple vegetables.

The Donkatsu was an excellent version. The pork was pounded VERY flat before being breaded and fried, and was presented very artfully on a large platter with fancy cut fruit and a large salad.

Excellent place. I had a bit more of a language problem this time (since the guy there with the best English was fairly busy), but we muddled through.

[Jason Perlow]

We went back again last night -- and were able to confirm that the place is a North Korean restaurant from the actual name of the place, which appears transliterized only on the credit card receipts -- "HWANG HAE DO" which is the name of a province in North Korea.

While many of the dishes are similar to their southern counterparts, there are some subtle differences. For starters, it appears they use a lot more chile pepper than they do in the south. Also, in their barbeque dishes, they forgo the lettuce wrapper and instead use paper-thin slices of daikon radish as well as a stack of flat, square rice noodles accompanied with a more chile-laden bean paste as well as a salty, garlicy condiment. In addition to the different method of eating barbeque, their bulgogi in particular -- Yook Soo Bulgogi -- is closer to a sukiyaki, as it is cooked in a broth.

I'm intrigued by North Korean food and this restaurant. Anyone else tried it yet?

[jhlurie]

Subjects to NOT discuss while eating at HWANG HAE DO.

1.) North Korean Dictators

2.) George Bush

3.) Casual inquiries to the restaurant employees about when they last lived in North Korea.

4.) Bombs

5.) How much better the U.S. was when Eisenhower was president.

Food sure is good there though.

[Rachel Perlow]

We visited again. I still don't care for the kimchi dumplings. However, they seem to have expanded their pan chan offerings. I especially enjoyed one which was a combination of either rice cake or fish cake with shredded chicken, and the seaweed was very good. I also had one of the fish casseroles for the first time. As long as you don't mind being on the look out for bones, it was delicious.

[201]

I finally got to this place about a month ago, but I've been lazy about writing up meals lately. Anyway, I've been itching to go back, so I thought that maybe if I wrote about it now, I would make myself hungry enough to do so!

I was there with two other people and we had two orders of bulgogi, bimbimbap, some sort of dumplings (sorry, language issues), and a tofu/seafood casserole that I didn't sample at all. I love Korean food, but I'm still not as familiar with the cuisine as I'd like to be. Luckily, the night we were there, the host was happy to answer questions. He certainly seems to be a native English speaker, but our server was not. Even though we had some trouble communicating with her, she was always patient and did a very good job.

When she brought out the plate of raw bulgogi, I wanted to kiss it. There's just something so beautiful about that vibrant red mountain of goodness that hits me on a gut level. Our server attended the cooking of the meat the whole time, but I would snatch up pieces that were a little rarer from time to time. Rather than a wood-burning grill, this place cooks the bulgogi on the hubcap-looking contraption (told you I'm not as familiar with the cuisine as I'd like to be) which allows the juices from the meat to be collected along the outer rim. This means that as the night goes on, the meat is cooked more in it's own juices and at the end they cook buckwheat noodles (soba, not sure if there's a Korean name for those) in the broth. I don't want to downplay the meat at all, but the phrase "save the best for last" came to mind as I was eating those noodles. If there was a quicker way just to have those noodles during the whole meal, I would certainly take it. Luckily though, there shouldn't be a problem making room for the amount of soba at the end of the meal.

I don't know what type of dumplings we had, because I ordered them as an afterthough when the menus were long gone and simply said something like "whatever you recommend" to our server. I think she may have said they were a pork/beef combination, but again I can't be sure. In any case, what we received were very nice steamed dumplings (not in a broth or anything), but nothing that really knocked my socks off. I suspect a little more care in ordering the dumplings would go a long way.

I really enjoyed the bimbimbap though. It was my first time having this dish and I have to say that it seems like the perfect breakfast food. Do Koreans eat this for breakfast? Does Jinmyo read the Jersey board? Well, regardless, what impressed me most about this simple dish was really just the flood of thoughts I had about how good it was as well as how good it WOULD be for breakfast, hot days, light lunch, comfort food, late night snack, pick-me-up, etc... Obviously, I can't comment on how this restaurant's bimbimbap compares to others', but let's just say that I really look forward to doing that legwork! I feel a bit like Steve Martin in The Jerk, "If THIS is out there... think how much MORE is out there!"

Ok, mission accomplished... I'm definitely hungry for Korean food now.

[jhlurie]

If you go back, try a greater variety of dumplings. As I recall, the steamed were the least effective. Fried, Stir Fried and inside of soup were all better preparations.

[Jason Perlow]

The stir fried one with the julienne vegetables in spicy sauce is really the best one they do.