Oz Korean BBQ: There’s No Place Like Home

Some people just don’t understand Korea.  They quickly overlook it when considering the important cultures that make up Asia.  They figure that it’s probably kind of like China and kind of like Japan and just hanging out, waiting for someone to visit.  The truth is that Korea is very different culture than either of its larger neighbors.  The Koreans have staked their territory in Asia and created a fiercely independent culture that includes some pretty nasty wars, some pretty crazy movies and some pretty good food.

On Friday night, Mrs. Eats and I joined the Sacramento Epicureans for an event at one of Sacramento’s most highly regarded Korean restaurants, Oz (literally translated “Emerald City”).  Our host, Paulie, made sure that we were in good company for our evening and went through some of the basics of Korean food.  The first thing to note is that this food is very, very different from other Asian cuisines that you might be used to.  This is not the clean, artistic Japanese flavors one finds at a sushi bar, nor is it the fried bowls of starch that we’ve come to expect from Chinese food.  Each diner started out with a selection of small salads including kimchi, that strangely tangy, spicy and altogether unique fermented cabbage dish that most folks associate with Korean food.  The other salads were tasty, ranging from sprouts to seaweed to some cousin of spinach that was so chewy it was nearly inedible—but it had a nice flavor, so I didn’t feel nearly as bad as I normally would have in swallowing a now slightly warm piece of half-masticated foliage.  In any case it washed down easily with a sip from my bottle of Korean beer called “Cass,” which, while not sounding very Korean, tasted wonderfully crisp and refreshing.

We were then given a bowl of “clear” noodles with peppers, mushrooms, onions, zucchinis, and beef.  The flavor was fantastic, even if the slightly brown-tinged “clear” noodles were not so “clear” but actually more translucent, which is an off-putting shade for any food to be.

Next came BBQ time.  Our servers came to the tables and fired up the small grills that were embedded in our thick marble tables.  First to be grilled were some thinly sliced pieces of chicken.  With these were served pickled garlic and jalapenos, red bean paste, and lettuce leaves (for wrapping).  The chicken was fantastic, marinated in a wonderfully sweet and savory sauce, as was the thinly sliced beef that followed.  Both were passed around the table and devoured quickly.  Just about everything was served family-style, which led to some pretty interesting hygiene situations.  Let’s just put it this way, the food was served without serving utensils of any kind, which meant we had to dish up from communal plates with the same chopsticks and spoons that we had already been eating with.  I’m not too squeamish about such things, but if your obsessive hand-washing sister in law asks you to take her to dinner on her only night in town, this is probably not the place you want to seek out.

The only strike-out in the meat department were the beef short ribs that were placed before us to grill as we saw fit.  If you’re a rib fan, you’re probably aware that the best way to cook ribs is “low and slow,” meaning low heat applied over a long period of time.  Trying to grill ribs on a small tabletop hot plate for hungry diners is probably not what most Texans, or for that matter most humans, would consider “appropriate cooking methodology.”  The resulting ribs were molten hot, charred heavily and about as easy to chew through as a zeppelin hull.

Mochi ice cream was served last, sweet and tangy, velvety and cold.  By the end we were all appropriately full and happy.  Paulie and I chatted a bit with a few of the other diners who had actually been to Korea and decided that the country can best be described as “the Ireland of Asia.”  Independent, unique, passionate about creative output, big consumers of good drink and good food, Korea is a country I would very much like to explore more should the opportunity present itself.  Who knows, maybe a cyclone will carry me away there some day.  In the meantime, we can always return to Oz for the kimchi.

Oz Korean BBQ- 3343 Bradshaw Rd, Sacramento
Food*** Atmosphere*** Service***