Korea & Japan

In the contest for the most affordable, exotic, wide-ranging, tasty and dynamic local lunch special, I'll nominate Korea & Japan, which is an East Hartford restaurant that specializes in, ... wait for it ... , Korean and Japanese food. OK, so they could stand to get a little more creative with their name, but their food doesn't need such help.

On a recent lunchtime visit, I was the only patron. There's an ink-painted mural at the back, and the dining room is mostly blond wood, rice paper screens, a few plants poking up between tables, with a sushi bar at one side.

I stopped in for a lunch special, and for $9 I got all this: a bowl of miso soup; five small plates of pan chan (free appetizers, these are to Korean restaurants what chips and salsa are to Mexican restaurants) -- spicy kim chee, stewed eggplant, a tangle of sauteed watercress greens, a crunchy pale root vegetable (like burdock) some pliant matchsticks of potato lightly coated in oil -- a soothing cup of mellow tea made from barley and corn; a handsome lacquered lunch-box tray with spicy pork, pieces of California roll, gyoza and shumai dumplings, a bit of seaweed salad, a few radish pickles; some steamed rice dotted with black sesame seeds; and a green salad with a carrot-colored miso-sesame dressing. It was plentiful, and it was good.

Korean food deserves to be elevated to the same level of popularity had by Thai, Japanese, Chinese, and Indian cuisines. For some reason, Korean food just hasn't made itself at home among the standard rotation of restaurant options in most cities. This is partly a result of numbers. If there were scores of thriving Korean restaurants, curious diners would eventually make their way in to see what the excitement is about.

The same things that win American restaurant-goers over to other Asian cooking --the exciting balancing act between sweet and salty tastes, and the creative use of the nutty flavor of sesame seeds. Korean food is often served with a flair for presentation, using a few pieces of vibrant-looking pickle, a sprinkling of minced scallions, or bed of banana leaf to lend a jolt of color or contrast.

The pork bul-go-gi is one of those Korean standards. The thin pieces of sliced pork are cooked with onions, rough-cut scallions and a spicy, almost barbecue-style sauce, that has a surprising flavor of toasted sesame seeds and garlic, and a welcome sweetness. Served with a side of rice and the miso soup, this would have been ample food, but the five dainty plates of vegetable appetizers really made the meal a visual treat, while beguiling the taste buds. The faint afterburn of garlic in the wispy greens called for repeated nips at the tender leaves to investigate the flavor. The kim chee (pickled cabbage with hot red pepper) was zingy, tangy and spicy. Lisa and I love this stuff, and we've started keeping a jar in the fridge to snack on with a cold glass of beer. The eggplant was the one starter that I steered away from. It was slightly slimy, with a few strips of roasted red pepper that added contrast.

Korea & Japan deserves to win some loyal lunch regulars. While the lunch specials might be remarkably affordable, some more costly dinner specials are available for more adventuresome eaters. There are several "big-bowl soup" items like the gopchong jungol (a spicy soup of tripe and vegetables -- probably not for first-timers), which go for around $30, and which likely can feed several. When we stopped in for dinner there was an expanded set of the pan chan dishes --seven in all -- including a curious potato salad with apples, strips of "fish cake" that had the texture and look of fried tofu, soybean sprouts that were equal parts light and earthy, seasoned squid and a jelly-ish seaweed salad. Our table was full before the entrees arrived.

Lisa tried more from the Japanese section. The tempura had its charms, but the the rainbow roll was a bit sloppy and gummy in the mouth. You'd be missing out on the fun, but if one wishes to completely ignore the Korean offerings, there's an entire menu of Japanese specialties.

Korea & Japan is just a skip over the river from downtown Hartford. I wouldn't be surprised if the place was packed next time I show up for lunch.

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Hartford County restaurants, East Hartford restaurants, Japanese restaurants, Sushi restaurants