korean noodle house
I love Korean food. I really do. On Yelp, one of the profile prompts is “My Last Meal on Earth” and I put Korean food. I want to eat dol sot bi bim bap, a seafood pancake, galbi, kim chi ji gae, a bowl of spicy seafood noodle soup and ten little dishes of tasty pickled vegetables.
It’s strange then, that I can count the Korean restaurants I’ve been to on my fingers. I don’t know, I guess I just don’t have a friend who can give me the scoop on where all the good Korean food is in town? In Houston we always go to Seoul Garden and in Austin we go to Schilla. Well, we were headed to H*mart to pick up some groceries and decided to do something we rarely do. Drive aimlessly and try a random restaurant. Several years ago I became a review junkie. Electronics, movies, restaurants, even outdoor gear. In no other aspect of my life am I so cautious, it really doesn’t make much sense but it is what it is.
So we’re driving along Long Point and we’re starting to get discouraged because we don’t see anything promising when all of a sudden we pass this house in the trees with a sign that says “Korean Noodle House”. The husband zooms by it but I insist that we double back and try it because it looks like a house and I will try any restaurant that looks like a house.
The tricky thing about being Asian is that if you walk into any authentic Asian restaurant, people assume you’re of that ethnicity. This place was no different. They greeted us in Korean and looked startled when we said we needed a table for two. We stood there uncomfortably and then the girl pointed us to another room and said, “Any table.”
The other room had different sized tables with checkered tableclothes and mismatched chairs. On the table was a one sheet laminated menu with four photos and Korean only. The husband looked at me and said, “What now?”
The girl came in a few minutes to bring us ice water and plates. We were relieved when she handed us English menus. It’s a really simple menu. Four sections, mostly noodle soup dishes with a few exceptions like bibimbap, pancakes and some appetizers. One of the sections allows you to get extra noodles or to “jumbo size”. The husband and I both ordered the Spicy Seafood Noodle Soup and the husband requested extra noodles. The girl came back in a few minutes with a small pot of kimchi and politely informed the husband that they can’t do extra noodles on the seafood soup but that she would give him more noodles and just not charge him.
The kimchi pancake came out first (haha yeah, we also ordered a pancake — overkill). It was pretty awesome even though it was falling apart — it was falling apart because they were so generous with the kim chi. The bowls of noodle soup came out shortly after.
Around this time the place started to fill up. Korean-speakers only.
The noodle soup was pretty spectacular. I think the noodles are homemade and knife cut because they were so fresh and roughly/unevenly cut. I’ve been to some places where they’ll cheat on their seafood soup and put in imitation crab and silly things like that but this place put in generous amounts of mussels, oysters, shrimp, octopus, and veggies. It was nicely topped off with strips of seaweed and enoki mushrooms. I couldn’t finish my bowl, I had to pass it off to the husband. It was ridiculous how much food was in that bowl. Korean food is kind of like Thai food, it’s hard to find it good and cheap. Each bowl of soup was $10 but with all the seafood in it, I think it was worth it.
We’ll definitely be back — I want to try everything on their menu.
P.S. They have a patio.
Korean Noodle House
1415 Murray Bay Street
Houston, Texas 77080
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