Let’s be honest: The Bay Area has nothing on Los Angeles when it comes to Korean food. San Francisco’s Koreatown dwarfs in size to LA’s, and while there are pockets of mouthwatering Korean restaurants in the South Bay and Oakland, Los Angeles simply has more. So it was with great anticipation that I visited Tahoe Galbi, located in Los Angeles’ Koreatown with a group of colleagues.
Tahoe Galbi bills itself as an all-you-can-eat barbeque restaurant, which, if you’re familiar with Korean barbecue, can be a very dangerous thing for your waistline. Sure, Korean food is healthy, but endless plates of meat? My stomach says yes, but my pants say no.
We nibbled on small plates of banchan while we waited for our first plate of meat to arrive. I went for the fish cakes and pickled cucumbers, my favorites.
Our plate of thinly-sliced rib eye soon arrived, and we grilled at the table, dipping into our bowls of chili bean paste to season the meat. A bite of rice here, a mouthful of steak there, and I was in heaven.
While we mostly ordered red meat, we opted for a plate of shrimp and baby octopus as well, which were very good. The shrimp in shell were messy but just perfect dipped in tiny plates of sesame oil and salt.
We shared a couple more plates of steak before moving on to pork belly, which was a first for me. I tried a bite and was surprised by the super rich flavor, which paired well with vinegary, spicy kimchi. My favorite, however, was the tender, marinated bulgogi beef.
Tahoe Galbi gets very busy, so service is accommodated by a buzzer at each table to signal for a waiter each time one wants to order something new. Want some more banchan? Buzz. Another plate of ribs, perhaps? Buzz.
I left Tahoe Galbi wishing we had an all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurant in the Bay Area. Although I’m not sure how much self-control I could exercise living so close to one, so maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. It’s a good thing Los Angeles isn’t too far away.
Please don’t laugh. Despite the cheesy name, Wokano actually serves up some quality fare. I can’t speak to the Asian fusion entrees on their menu, but when a colleague and I arrived in Los Angeles for a work trip one late weeknight, we were craving sushi. Wokano was located just down the block from where were staying, so we decided to give it a shot.
Part lounge, part restaurant, I admit I was a little apprehensive about what to expect. But my colleague and I were ravenous, and in our hunger, we ordered the Sushi Love Boat for Two. Don’t judge us; it was a strategic decision.
But first, we started with the ubiquitous miso soup and salad, which were both very good. The soup was invigorating after our tiring flight, and I’m still wondering what they put in the salad dressing to make it so tangy and lip-smackingly good.
Next came our, ahem, Love Boat for Two, consisting of assorted sushi, sashimi, tuna hand rolls, tiger rolls, and eel avocado rolls, oh my. Okay, admittedly, this was not the best sushi I’ve ever had in my life. But for a late weeknight evening in what was an otherwise mostly deserted downtown Los Angeles, it was very satisfying. Our only disappointment was the tuna hand roll, which had been chopped into a paste-like oblivion. But the yellowtail, salmon, and ahi? I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
Service was prompt at Wokcano and if you can put your sushi puritanism aside for an hour or two, Wokcano is a good choice. I’m used to stumbling into the nearest eatery at random after a flight just to hold me over, so Wokcano was a welcome surprise.
Our last full day in Rome was slow-paced, as Melody and I were both nursing colds that just wouldn’t seem to go away. After an unsuccessful search for a reputedly chic shopping neighborhood in the Marconi district that dropped us off in an area that screamed stoic relics of the Mussolini era rather than boutiques, we left and headed to familiar ground: Campo de’ Fiori. There, we had lunch at Hostaria Romanesca, a busy restaurant that seemed promising.
The tourist overflow should have been the first warning sign. They were out of my first and second pasta choice but undeterred, I asked for the pasta alla norcina, which was so overly rich and cream-laden that the sausage and mushrooms were more like an afterthought than the primary flavors.
We knew what we had to do. We couldn’t finish our pastas, but before we left Campo de’ Fiori, Melody and I walked over to Forno Campo de’ Fiori and bought a couple slices of pizza. Much better.
We had initially planned on spending our last day in Italy by making a day trip to Pompeii, but because we were both feeling so under the weather, we headed towards the Tiber River after lunch, strolling through the outdoor markets and picking up a snack or two along the way.
Gummies are one of my favorite candies, so we stopped at what may be the best display of gummies I’ve ever seen and bought a mixed bag. As luck would have it, we lost the bag ten minutes later. I blame the distraction of the not-so-tasty pistachio gelato that I picked up along the way right after. In any case, we continued our stroll until we stumbled upon St. Peter’s Square, just as the neighborhood was getting ready for the New Year’s Eve festivities.
We wanted to stay for the countdown, but our stuffy noses weren’t getting any better and we had to get some rest before we got up in the middle of the night to head back to the airport. Bag of cold-fighting tangerines in tow, we returned to our hotel. Just a few hours later, we were back at Fiumicino Airport, waiting for our flight to take us back to San Francisco. Not a bad way to ring in the new year, if you ask me.
I’ll admit that I hadn’t heard of Villa Borghese until I began planning this trip. Similar in scope and size to New York City’s Central Park, Villa Borghese houses a renowned art gallery and stunning views to boot. The park is dotted with cafes and gardens, a perfect place to spend a leisurely afternoon after four hectic days.
Our first stop at Villa Borghese was a small cafe for an early lunch. I got a salami and cheese panini and we ate our sandwiches while we walked, taking in the view between bites.
For a park that began in construction in the 1600s (but wasn’t opened up to the public until 1903), Villa Borghese is impeccably well-preserved. But it’s also seemingly endless, and Melody and I endlessly looped around in search of the lake at Giardino del Lago until we gave up and consulted a map.
We never did find the lake, but we were happy — Villa Borghese was worth the trip to the outskirts of Rome. We were hungry though, so found our way towards the Tridente neighborhood and decided on Life…Ristorante for lunch. The intentionally placed ellipses are part of Life…Ristorante’s name, and and it was with a mixture of amusement and curiosity that we sat down to eat.
I was feeling decadent, so I had the fetuccine with porcini mushrooms and black truffles, with an aperol spritzer on the side. My fetuccine was fresh and perfectly cooked and the truffles weren’t as strongly-flavored as I’d hoped, but satisfying nevertheless. The mushrooms were soft and velvety, a texture I’m unaccustomed to in porcini since they’re usually dried. Melody had the pappardelle with porcini mushrooms and broccoli because she’d caught a cold (that I’d soon catch too) and well, broccoli is a vegetable so naturally that made the huge plate of pasta good for a cold.
After lunch, we spent some time strolling around Tridente and admiring the narrow sidewalks and chic boutiques. Our trip was nearing to an end, and this is where I began to go into a low-grade panic mode that we hadn’t yet sampled enough Roman fare. I stepped into the closest gelateria and bought a Nutella gelato.
We never did make it to Rome’s famed Gelato di San Crispino, but the gelato at Centurion did the trick. By this point it was getting late, and there were few restaurants in the neighborhood where our hotel was located, so we stayed in Tridente and had dinner at Hosteleria di 31.
It was packed inside, with diners practically sitting in each other’s laps, but service was brisk and no-frills. I ordered the pappardelle with wild boar sauce, and Melody had the spaghetti Bolognese.
I’ll be honest. I wasn’t even hungry, but I’d never tried wild boar and curiosity got the best of me. It was richer than beef, and the sauce was doused in flecks of black pepper. I probably would have enjoyed it more had I not just downed a plate of pasta and cone of gelato beforehand, but nevertheless, I was sated.
We declared our stealth eating mission an accomplishment and headed back to our hotel for an early night in. We picked up a bag of tangerines on the way back to fight our colds and settled in for few episodes of Willy il principe di Bel Air.
I’m conflicted when it comes to the Colosseum. It’s among the most stunning sights in the world, but it’s flanked by so many tourists that at the end of the day, you’re too distracted to pay any attention to the towering columns in front of you because you’re busy getting getting shoved into line after line after line.
That’s essentially how our fourth morning in Rome began. After standing in a tangled, irate crowd for over an hour, we grabbed our Colosseum tickets and things calmed down from there.
There’s not a whole lot to say about the Colosseum that hasn’t already been said. It’s really, really old (built in 72 AD to be exact), and really, really big (it could seat over 50,000 people).
We circled the perimeter and made our way across the street to Palatine Hill, which was once ancient Rome’s equivalent of Beverly Hills. Dotted with ruined villas, Palatine is an archaeologist’s dream and the oldest site in Rome that has been continuously inhabited. It was also the birthplace of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor.
Palatine leads right into the Roman Forum, which was my favorite of the three sights. The ruins of the ancient government of Rome, the royal residence, Senate house, tribunals, and government buildings are all housed here. Not everything has survived the centuries, but it’s easy to imagine the hustle and flow of daily life in ancient Rome at the Forum.
By the time we finished walking through the Roman Forum, we were starving, and the local neighborhood didn’t have many restaurants nearby. Trastevere was next up on our list, so we hopped on a bus in search of what’s touted as Rome’s most picturesque neighborhood. Unfortunately, we got off at the wrong stop, and we were so famished that in our hunt for Trastevere, we gave up and popped into the first restaurant that we could find.
I don’t remember the name of this restaurant, but Melody and I referred to it as “Italian Olive Garden” for the rest of our trip, let’s just put it that way.
We were craving seafood, so we had the sauteed mussels to start. These were simple and satisfying, though a bit on the salty side.
I was really craving seafood, so I ordered the seafood ravioli as my entree. I take back what I said about the mussels being salty. No no, this was salty. The sauce was essentially the same as the mussels, but with an extra few spoons or so of salt thrown in for good measure. The seafood itself was fresh, but the ravioli left something to be desired.
Once we finished eating, we resumed our hunt for Trastevere and as luck would have it, it had been less than a block away all along. Melody and I wistfully walked past postcard-perfect trattorias and restaurants advertising stewed oxtail, truffled pasta, and fresh sugo, wishing we’d been a little more patient. We still wanted to soak up a little of Trastevere, so we stopped at Babylon Cafe for a drink.
I had the hazelnut affogato, a delicious blend of creamy gelato and warm, energizing espresso. A word of caution: Babylon Cafe has all kinds of NSFW artwork adorning the walls as we discovered halfway through our drinks, so be forewarned if you’re traveling with the kiddies.
There was one other stop we had to make before we called it a day. We got on another bus to head towards Volpetti, a deli my friend Menyui had told me about while I was planning this trip. Located in the Testaccio neighborhood, Volpetti is arguably Rome’s best deli. The quality is top-notch, but it comes with a price tag. The friendly butchers behind the counter fed us samples of truffled salami and Parmesan while we perused. I bought some truffled honey and other goodies to take home.
We’d wanted to go to nearby Da Felice for dinner, reputedly a favorite of Roberto Benigni’s and well-known for it’s homestyle Roman fare, but it was closed. Dejected, we got on the bus and headed back to our hotel. We were only temporarily disappointed though, as we’d have a chance to make up for it the next day.
