[PDX] Bewon...

[ExtraMSG]

Even though it wasn't among the 50 restaurants on Willamette Week's top 107 that I haven't been to, I've really been wanting to try their fixed price dinner. I've only ordered ala carte there before.

Damn! Damn! So good. The squash soup: excellent. Those black beans and walnuts: fabulous. The kimchee: great. The little crepe "tacos" with 8 different fillings: fantastic. The soy pot roast: yum.

What an awesome deal, too. Seven courses for $25 with all the mini courses within the main course. And they were constantly asking us if we wanted more of the side dishes. Honestly, yes, but I was stuffed and didn't want to take advantage of their hospitality.

The place wasn't full even with only 11 tables tonight, but 75% of the tables were populated by Asian girls with their caucasian dates. Love, keep my favorite Asian restaurant in Portland alive.

Here's a report from my first visit that I put up on Chowhound:

I have a friend coming in from out of town who lived in Korea for a couple years so I wanted to see if this was a must-do. Boy was it. Honestly after one visit, I would say this Korean place tops all these Chinese places. And I like the fact that they have a tasting menu and give you lots of small plates even at lunch. That's when I went, lunch. I ordered the dae ji bul go gi, sliced pork in a red pepper paste. Very good. Spicy with good, balanced flavors and plenty of depth. They brought out 5 small side dishes, too, including kim chee, black beans in a sweet sauce, new potatoes in a light sauce, some sort of shredded vegatable in a pepper sauce, and a combo of spinach, mushroom, and bean sprouts. It was all very good. You could tell how much the chefs care for the dishes and the ingredients. All flavors were well balanced and there was a mastery of textures. This is a place I will definitely visit again.

[ExtraMSG]

Ten of us from the PortlandFood group ate dinner at Bewon last night. Chris, the proprieter was very generous with us, coming out and explaining in detail each dish, its cultural and gustatory significance. He also talked about his choices for the very reasonable wine pairings. He got the Han Jung Shik and tried everything.

I really enjoy Bewon. Everything is handled so exquisitely. Flavors are generally very well balanced. And things I don't expect to like, I do.

Some of the standouts for me last night were:

* The japchae, sweet potato noodles, as always, which he says they simmer in a light mushroom broth.

* The gu jeol pan, like miang kum for Thai, little crepes that you build yourself with eight different foods that represent the eight regions of Korea.

* Hobak juk, a three potato porridge with with a nice bit of sweetness from honey.

* The su jeong gwa, a cinnamon-ginger "cider" of sorts. So perfectly balanced.

* The chi ge, 9 different seasonal side dishes (he gave us 11), among which the crispy-fried seaweed with sweet rice was fantastic. I also really enjoyed the spicy kim chee, the black beans with walnut, the squid, and the slightly sweetened potatoes.

Honestly, Bewon probably isn't my favorite Asian food in Portland. But I think in many ways they deserve to be called the best because of the obvious care they take with each item and the obvious love they have for their own food. At $25, the 7 course han jung shik ($40 with wine pairings) is a great deal. You get soup and the 9 sides as part of your main course, too, which makes it in many ways more like 17 courses (and they'll replenish your sides).

[whippy]

bewon is super good. but really, xmsg, you rather are baiting us with that title aren't you? "best" and "asian" both!

i've seen bewon slow as well. acorn jelly may be too much for portland to swallow.

for what it's worth, you can get their food delivered if you don't feel like dining out. they send along all the sides, too.

i, like you, hate the way that good restaurants fall by the wayside sometimes. it's nice that you are championing (is this a word?) them. i wish you luck, but i'm not real hopeful. portland's restaurants succeed and fail for inscrutable reasons. unless it's a restaurant from the people who brought you stanford's etc, pacific coast i think? they are very good at creating successful restaurants.

[ExtraMSG]

Very true. I've lamented aspects of Portland's tastes before. Cafe Azul was more or less the last straw for me. At least Stanford's and Newport Bay are better quality than the national chains they compete with.

I think most of the Bewon menu is pretty accessible, though, if people just give it a try. Most of the basic entrees are just thinly sliced meats, no less accessible than fajitas. It's the things around the entrees at Bewon that make it special, imo. But for $7 at lunch Joe Blow should be able to enjoy himself.

[whippy]

At least Stanford's and Newport Bay are better quality than the national chains they compete with.

yes, 4s instead of 3s (on a scale of 1 to 10). is that fair?

probably not really. chains are special creatures.

if people just give it a try

you are a dreamer. i am with you all the way, but pdx is not yet ready to "just give it a try." most of our compatriots would rather find a comfortably corporate atmposphere to relax in.

as evidence, who bothers to post here?

your sad comrade,

whippy

[ExtraMSG]

Honestly, I think Portlanders aren't as bad as some places. Been to a city like Dallas where Brinker has its headquarters? That's how we got Whole Foods, a store that really should be local, but it came from Texas, so it became a chain. Anything that's successful there becomes a chain eventually.

We just like big plates of food cheap. If you're a Thai restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, a pho place, a breakfast place, a pub grub place, etc, you might flourish.

At least our chains largely stay in the suburbs, except the steakhouses and the recent additions of PF Changs and Romano Macaroni Grill.

[trillium]

I've heard a nasty rumor that the Cheesecake Factory is opening the Pearl!!

Yuck.

regards,

trillium

[ExtraMSG]

See, now to me that's something that should just open in Beaverton, like Hooters. I guess, though, to a large degree, individual restaurants might be priced out of places like The Pearl. I know I've talked with lots of little business owners -- art dealers, etc -- who are getting priced out.

[duckduck]

I disagree. There are many of us that will go non-corporate first. I think our little foodie group is proof of that. With short notice there were still 10 of us there to give Be Won a try. There probably would have been a crowd if we thought they could handle the numbers if we threw out an open "come one, come all" to the gang. If Nick's dreamin', I'm coming along for the ride 'cause it's been sweet so far. PortlandFood group rocks!

[whippy]

I disagree.

i think you disagree with me? not totally sure.

but if i'm reading you correctly, we agree in spirit, in terms of the way things should be. lots of people should be enjoying the very good meals available at bewon. (who aren't.) i myself regularly dream about just such a restaurant landscape.

however, i'm not at all sure that people like you and i--who are interested enough in food and restaurants to spend their odd minutes posting random thoughts on a board dedicated to the food-obsessed--really speak of a more general portland population. i lurk the portlandfoodorg site, and admire it. but a table of ten, or even a small crowd will NOT support a gem like bewon in the long run.

big crowds and regulars support restaurants in the long run. in big crowds, say, 2 people out of a hundred are "foodies." does that sound fair?

for what it's worth, i can think of nothing funnier than art galleries in the pearl having to move because the cheesecake factory could outbid them. i'd laugh myself silly.

i know that's offensive somehow. i'm sorry.

whippy

[ExtraMSG]

All you can do, really, though is talk about an ideal or talk about Portland relative to other places. All cities fall short of the ideal, but it doesn't mean people like us shouldn't be working towards it. Even great food cities like Chicago have Cheesecake Factories with 2 hour waits and longer.

It's truly only the quantity and diversity of people in cities like NY and Chicago that make them look so much like the ideal. If you limited the number of people in those cities to the numbers in Portland and gave ourselves similar ethnic percentages, I think you'd find populations that are very similar in taste.

Of course, that doesn't mean those aren't, overall, better food cities, just that Portlanders aren't any less, I don't think, adventurous or food conscious, really. There are just a lot more rich people to support places like Trio, Trotter's, and Tru, and more ethnicities to create a base for lots of great Indian restaurants, Mexican restaurants, etc.

Portlanders seem to be a B+ when it comes to openess relative to others. We're probably worse at knowing what's good relative to others just because we don't have the size to have the competition. Things are improving in some areas, though. I think there's been a lot of improvement in Thai food over the last year or two.

[ExtraMSG]

Some pics (more here):

3 pumpkin porridge

Lots of food

Crispy-fried seaweed and sweet rice

Ground cod

Soup and chicken

Tea and cookie

[hungry_moose]

Very nice piece ExtraMSG. I will tell my parents to try Bewon, they are always complaining that there are no good Korean & Chinese restaurants in Portland. They love visiting Seattle so that they could eat all the yummy food (Sea Garden, Ho Ho’s, HoSoonYi, YetGore, Shin Sung, So Gong Dong, WooreOk, etc. – they don’t like PF Chang’s). A tasting menu at a Korean place, what a shocker (in a good way)~! I feel that Korean food has so much potential to appeal to a wider audience, but no one has really done it in the PNW (at least not that I know of). L.A. has some good places in Bev. Hills where 80% of clientele are white, NY has hip places such as Clay – where models gorge on Dor Sup Bibimbop and Jap Chae. These restaurants have slightly Americanized the dishes, but very tasty in any case. It’s always nice to see all types of non-Koreans dining at Korean restaurants. The numbers are increasing BTW. Maybe I need to take up this venture in the near future and see what kind of clientele it will attract……you bet service will be kicked up several notches, restrooms spotless, and you will be able to communicate with the servers. I need a trip to Korea for some research into combos like Kalbi/Nengmyun specials and goldfish cakes filled with sweet red beans.

Dreaming…..

hungry_moose

[Abra]

We went to BeWon this past weekend, and had what everyone on this thread has had, the seven course set menu. It's a different style of Korean than I'm used to, much more refined, nothing in the least spicy, sweeter. We did ask for and got a couple of delicious hot sauces, and learned that Koreans normally wouldn't add condiments to a prepared dish, that it was perhaps a bit of an insult to the chef. But still, we all wanted it spicier, and so we forged ahead somewhat abashed but rudely.

The service is indeed fantastically informative and friendly, and we had a great time. I'd unhesitatingly send people there who haven't had Korean food before. I recommend against the "wine pairing" option. We all had it, but it's a pretty silly concept. The wines weren't very nice, and very few of them belonged with Korean food at all. We suggested that maybe a beer pairing might be more in the spirit, so if you go and see that on the menu, you heard it here first.

Our pumpkin juk looked just like ExtraMSG's, except his in in focus and mine isn't, so I'll spare you that.

the fixings for the little stuffed crepes

and one assembled

japchae

the 9 panchan, and two dishes of heretical hot sauce

tofu soup

pork

chicken

rib eye

and my salt mackeral, surrounded by panchan

sort of a little crispy rice meringue.

So, all in all, a delicate and lovely meal.

[cat lancaster]

I've only been to Bewon once and it was last summer for lunch. After looking at the pictures here, I've decided that it's time I go back.

It's also nice to see that this thread was started two years ago and there was worry about the demise of Bewon. I'm glad to know that the food community here in Portland is supporting them.

Abra - this makes post number 75! And thanks for sharing your anniversary weekend with us in Portland - it was lovely to meet you and Shell.

Cat