Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Side dishes with an order of anything

Learning to identify my favorite banchan

Banchan in the white dishes, left to right: eomuk, cheongpomuk, sigeumchi, ggakdugi, kongnamul, broccoli, kimchi, miyeok, gamja jorim, cheonsachae. Do Re Mi House.
Banchan in the white dishes, left to right: eomuk, cheongpomuk, sigeumchi, ggakdugi, kongnamul, broccoli, kimchi, miyeok, gamja jorim, cheonsachae. Do Re Mi House.
Place

Do Re Mi House

8199 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, San Diego

Do Re Mi House. Fa so la ti house must be at another location.

I walked into Do Re Mi House recently and ordered a dinner of hot tofu stew for about 10 bucks. It could just have easily been japchae noodles, or a hot stone bibimbap rice bowl. But really, I was there for the banchan, because Do Re Mi has the best in town. The familiar small plates started appearing at my table, and for the fifteenth time I wondered what they all were — none are listed on the menu, and some of this stuff is so far removed from Western cuisine I couldn't even tell what it was made from.

I had planned to be an annoying customer, asking my waitress "What's this?" and "How do you pronounce that?" But she shot me down from the start, too busy and exasperated to give a damn about my fluttering, blue, inquisitive eyes. Which is why I've had to do a little independent research to identify (correctly I hope) some of my favorite banchan dishes.

Sponsored
Sponsored

I'll start with the simplest stuff. The kimchi cabbage was easy to identify, with its spicy pickling and red sauce. So was the kongnamul — boiled and seasoned mung bean sprouts. I enjoy them both, though I don't want to give the impression they're remotely alike, as I know a lot of people have an aversion to kimchi, and the relatively mild, almost nutty flavors of the sprouts swing widely in the opposite direction.

In fact, while a few of these dishes resemble one another in look, they rarely do in taste. Gamja jorim consists of sweetly braised chunks of potato, which are soft and moist, and usually the first to go when I eat here with friends. Covered with a red paste, ggakdugi looks like a spicier version of the potato dish, but it's actually another kimchi, made with radish. Though not an intentional bait and switch, the crunch of the radish can shock your senses, while probably clearing your sinuses.

I couldn't find a Korean term to name the small broccoli dish with the vaguely orange colored sauce, but it tastes like steamed broccoli with a savory, almost creamy dressing. The braised spinach sigeumchi also lives up to its appearance, with a satisfying saltiness, though the similar looking seaweed miyeok takes a bitter turn. Part of the joy of sifting through these disparate dishes is in bouncing from flavor to flavor, reveling in the complexity of one, the simplicity of the next, and the confounding nature of the one after that.

I got a little confused trying to pin down the name of the fish cake strips, which come off as slightly tangy and pleasantly chewy. They're either called eomuk or odaeng, which seem to be about the same thing. But by far the toughest to ID were the two dishes I find to be the most unusual, memorable and delicious of the bunch. Cheongpomuk are pieces of jelly made from mung starch that had me thinking they were thick chunks of rice noodle — quite cool and just barely al dente, served with a mild chili paste.

Finally, cheonsachae are pickled kelp noodles, a description that doesn't do them justice. Think crystallized noodles of sweet water, glasslike in appearance and crunchy in the way raw fish is said to be crunchy, with a burst of juiciness in each bite, and just a hint of vinegar to keep them from being too candylike. It's still not something I'm used to tasting, though I'll keep going back until it is. Only, if you see me there, don't ask me how to pronounce any of these words correctly. I barely know how to say banchan out loud.

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Gonzo Report: Three nights of Mission Bayfest bring bliss

“This is a top-notch production.”
Next Article

Two poems by Marvin Bell

“To Dorothy” and “The Self and the Mulberry”
Banchan in the white dishes, left to right: eomuk, cheongpomuk, sigeumchi, ggakdugi, kongnamul, broccoli, kimchi, miyeok, gamja jorim, cheonsachae. Do Re Mi House.
Banchan in the white dishes, left to right: eomuk, cheongpomuk, sigeumchi, ggakdugi, kongnamul, broccoli, kimchi, miyeok, gamja jorim, cheonsachae. Do Re Mi House.
Place

Do Re Mi House

8199 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, San Diego

Do Re Mi House. Fa so la ti house must be at another location.

I walked into Do Re Mi House recently and ordered a dinner of hot tofu stew for about 10 bucks. It could just have easily been japchae noodles, or a hot stone bibimbap rice bowl. But really, I was there for the banchan, because Do Re Mi has the best in town. The familiar small plates started appearing at my table, and for the fifteenth time I wondered what they all were — none are listed on the menu, and some of this stuff is so far removed from Western cuisine I couldn't even tell what it was made from.

I had planned to be an annoying customer, asking my waitress "What's this?" and "How do you pronounce that?" But she shot me down from the start, too busy and exasperated to give a damn about my fluttering, blue, inquisitive eyes. Which is why I've had to do a little independent research to identify (correctly I hope) some of my favorite banchan dishes.

Sponsored
Sponsored

I'll start with the simplest stuff. The kimchi cabbage was easy to identify, with its spicy pickling and red sauce. So was the kongnamul — boiled and seasoned mung bean sprouts. I enjoy them both, though I don't want to give the impression they're remotely alike, as I know a lot of people have an aversion to kimchi, and the relatively mild, almost nutty flavors of the sprouts swing widely in the opposite direction.

In fact, while a few of these dishes resemble one another in look, they rarely do in taste. Gamja jorim consists of sweetly braised chunks of potato, which are soft and moist, and usually the first to go when I eat here with friends. Covered with a red paste, ggakdugi looks like a spicier version of the potato dish, but it's actually another kimchi, made with radish. Though not an intentional bait and switch, the crunch of the radish can shock your senses, while probably clearing your sinuses.

I couldn't find a Korean term to name the small broccoli dish with the vaguely orange colored sauce, but it tastes like steamed broccoli with a savory, almost creamy dressing. The braised spinach sigeumchi also lives up to its appearance, with a satisfying saltiness, though the similar looking seaweed miyeok takes a bitter turn. Part of the joy of sifting through these disparate dishes is in bouncing from flavor to flavor, reveling in the complexity of one, the simplicity of the next, and the confounding nature of the one after that.

I got a little confused trying to pin down the name of the fish cake strips, which come off as slightly tangy and pleasantly chewy. They're either called eomuk or odaeng, which seem to be about the same thing. But by far the toughest to ID were the two dishes I find to be the most unusual, memorable and delicious of the bunch. Cheongpomuk are pieces of jelly made from mung starch that had me thinking they were thick chunks of rice noodle — quite cool and just barely al dente, served with a mild chili paste.

Finally, cheonsachae are pickled kelp noodles, a description that doesn't do them justice. Think crystallized noodles of sweet water, glasslike in appearance and crunchy in the way raw fish is said to be crunchy, with a burst of juiciness in each bite, and just a hint of vinegar to keep them from being too candylike. It's still not something I'm used to tasting, though I'll keep going back until it is. Only, if you see me there, don't ask me how to pronounce any of these words correctly. I barely know how to say banchan out loud.

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Jazz guitarist Alex Ciavarelli pays tribute to pianist Oscar Peterson

“I had to extract the elements that spoke to me and realize them on my instrument”
Next Article

Conservatives cry, “Turnabout is fair gay!”

Will Three See Eight’s Fate?
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader