If you just want to get down to business with some fried foods and barbecued meat, San Soo Gab San is your place. Come hungry and wear your play clothes. You're going to walk out of here full and smelling of meat.
Judy was pretty excited to be here
San Soo Gab San is an unassuming, no nonsense joint that focuses on the food. Period. The non-atmosphere is the atmosphere. You sit in twenty or thirty year old wooden booths and tables. The main design element is the construction-zone orange industrial strength exhaust hoods that suck out the fog of meat smoke. You are served by efficient, unsmiling, matter of fact waitresses. This place means business. And that's fine.
When full and all the hoods are firing, the place truly hums. It's smoky, noisy and energetic with the smell of meat in the air and 22 oz. bottles of OB all around. It makes me happy.
Once you order you will experience a food avalanche.
Get an appetizer or two - say the mandu, or the agedash tofu.
Agedash tofu
Get a plate of meat.
And definitely go the cook it yourself route. They are old school here. You're working with a charcoal or wood grill. Let the fancy places have their built in gas grill tables. We've got bus boys running around with bowls of fire and hot grill faces.
Don't forget that you will also get 15 - 20 miscellaneous side dishes (called Panchan). Every square inch of table space is covered in food.
However, while my wife and I liked this place just fine, in the interest of full disclosure I do have to say it didn't quite pass muster with my Korean in laws. They found it average at best. But then, they are used to the 'more meat buzzer' that is installed at every booth of their favorite place in the suburbs. Push it and signal to the waitress with your hands how many more pounds of meat you want. Hard to argue with the brilliance of that kind of efficiency. If San Soo Gab San adds the meat buzzer I'll take the in-laws back and see if we can't up this to a 5-star review.
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