When I started this blog a few years ago I had in mind a daunting goal of trying, whenever possible, not to just rehash in an inferior manner spots Jonathan Gold writes about. It's safe to say I've probably failed pretty miserably. I'm proud of the one or two spots that I may have covered before Gold but, ultimately, I've got a long way to go. Walking back to my car today, I thought of two reasons for this, though I'm sure there are more: (a) he's lived in LA forever and probably been everywhere I would have any desire to go to, and (b) it's hard not to frequent the spots he picks out as he makes them sound so good, particularly of late, with cold korean noodles, San Fernando Valley ramen (who wants to drive to Gardena everytime?), and Thai breakfast (just to name a few). All this is to say I'll continue the failure to today by writing about a place at which I just had lunch: Yu Chun Restaurant on Olympic just east of Western.
The restaurant was stuffed beyond capacity at 1:30 on a Thursday afternoon and, it's safe to say, every table had at least one bowl of what I suppose is the house specialty: Naeng Myun. After consuming a bowl in a cool room with the knowledge of the relative cauldron that awaited on my exit from the restaurant I can assert that it now ranks up there with an oily bowl of gazpacho as my favorite food for those rare, but particularly sweltering, LA summer days. Yu Chun's version of the dish which, as Gold relates, is as much slushy as soup, arrives in a steel bowl as an icy, light to the point of floating, slightly sugary, slight vinegary broth with a generous helping of black arrowroot noodles, thinly sliced cucumber, a few slices of beef, radish and half a hard boiled egg. It may be the quintessentially refreshing and unobtrusive meal, one that offers the completely artificial, though still valuable, feeling of being cleansed. At meal's end I wanted to turn the bowl over and suck down the now less icy broth but wasn't quite sure on the etiquette. Hopefully there will be a next time sometime soon and, if so, I'll have to try the kimchee dumplings that seemed to occupy at least 70% of the tables.