Korean barbeque

Saturday night, we headed out to Duluth to MK-1 for Korean BBQ. The parking lot was packed for something at the Monarch banquet hall but happily, the restaurant had blocked off a series of spaces for MK-1 customers so we got a spot easily.

It's always a toss up on service when we go to MK-1. Sometimes the planets align and it's perfect. Sometimes we get someone who doesn't seem very happy and it's back to basics. This was one of those latter times. Our server was nice enough, I guess, but mostly I preyed on other servers to get what I wanted.

The banchan here are tasty. I really like this brown jello-like squares served with a spicy sauce and the spicy-pickled crab when they have it, which isn't often. The bok choy with spicy sauce is also good. It's slightly sweet. The Korean potato salad is also tasty. Josh also really likes the kimchi but I'm hit or miss on it. I think it depends on the spiciness level. The rest of the banchan are meh to me.

We got #33 and #38, I think, which are both short ribs but one is marinated. They do the unmarinated first which is tasty, but not on its own. It took two attempts for me to get the sesame oil/salt/pepper mixture, but eventually I prevailed. We really like the pickled daikon discs for wrapping the meat, then top with some spicy-sauced scallions... yum. The marinated meat was even better. Some I ate with the daikon, some with just rice. I'm not a fan of the lettuce leaves, which is too bad, because you get so many of them.

And then the spicy tofu stew that you get for free is awesome also. I drank all the soup out of that. For dessert, the ricey soup was icy. Tasty.

Despite the weirdness with the service, I really enjoy eating here. The bulgogi is really good too, but it's hard to come here and choose that over the BBQ if there are seats in the grill area. I do wish the bulgogi had more noodles though.