Ten most delicious Korean dishes

The ground rules

By Mari Taketa
Special to Metromix

Here’s the thing: there are a gazillion Korean restaurants in town, with gazillions more choices on their menus. We set ourselves a mission. We’d collect research and recommendations, personally eat them all, and winnow out the 10 most delicious Korean dishes in Honolulu.

But after 13 restaurants in three weeks — one every 1.77 days — we had to face up to the gut-busting truth that there were at least that many more in the urban core alone. In these tough times, how much can one expense account forgive? (Plus our clothes were getting pretty tight.)

We did find 10 incredible dishes. These were the ground rules:

• At least two of the following had to occur at first bite: a) Mmm's, b) slapping the table, c) head-nodding or — rolling, d) quick swallowing to blurt, "You gotta try this!" or e) instant resolve to come back and order the same thing. Bonus points if we took home the leftovers and scarfed them the same day.

• We weren’t going for the most authentic taste, or small-kid time memories from Auntie’s kitchen. We were going for immediate, hands-down, no-two-ways delicious.

• No plate lunches. Who hasn’t had a #5 kalbi/meat jun special with choice of four sides? All our dishes are from sit-down restaurants.

• Even the most amazing dish isn’t worth being treated rudely or rushed through a meal. If a knowledgeable source loved the food but dissed the service, we crossed the place off our prospect list.

So here they are…