Korean Slate

If I had known that the food for the eating contest was to be choco pie, I would have signed up for it. Though lately I’ve been more partial to the Lotte brand. The brand they ate was Orion.

Picture taken by Denkym, who was the DJ at this “first annual Korean Barbecue Festival and Cook-off” in Los Angeles.

It was about four thousand people lining up to eat Korean barbecue. Most of the plates were $15 but I saw one booth prominently displaying a handwritten announcement that their price was a mere $10.

Ham Ji Pak restaurant was “joking” that they had run out of meat but they had ordered for more. I saw for the first time the hanja characters for So Hyang restaurant — it turns out they mean something like “barbecue fragrance.” The ribs eatery Moo Dae Po had a big sign announcing the grand opening of MooDaePo II, which must mean that in this economy they are doing very well.

Trice had someone stationed out front handing out “Feed Your Hunger” cards featuring their product, which is a triangle-shaped kimbap that’s just 150 calories. They have eight flavors (kimchi, spicy tuna, ham…) but they ran out of the KBBQ flavor by four pm.

Yelp had a wheel that they were asking people to spin. More interesting was the life-size Paris Hilton cutout which they had wear an “I Love Yelp” t-shirt.

Because it was a hot day in Los Angeles, Menehune‘s large shaved-ice cones were very popular. Next to them was Flip’s Beach BBQ, which has been on some Bobby Flay show. Their specialty is spicy galbi, as in ribs.

Unfamiliar to me was Dae Jang Geum, sellers of ttokpokki (rice cakes drenched in red-pepper sauce).

Impressed that the Korean company JayOne (pronounced either as “jay-one” / “jay-won” or “jah-yon” as in the Korean word for ‘nature’) supplies Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. So neat. Their product line includes KBBQ sauce, seaweed, rice crackers, aloe vera drinks, yuzu/yuja tea that looks like orange marmalade, and a whole bunch of other cool healthful stuff.

My take on the whole festival? People who love their meat and being in the midst of so many carnivores had a grand time without a doubt. Me, I’m too exhausted to even process my own videos and photos. Did pick up a lot of business cards, whose details I will enter into my Koreatown Directory… soon. Yes, the colors and style will be improved for sure… someday.