Ozakkyo Korean restaurant (2008-06-20)
We went to Okubo (Koreatown) looking for their national dish--Ginseng Chicken Soup--to fill our stomachs. Having no particular restaurant in mind, we just kept wandering until we were drawn to the tons of celebrity diners' photos in front of Ozakkyo. Heck, if all those famous people chose to eat there, how bad can it be?
It was barely 6 o'clock when we entered the restaurant and only one
other table was occupied by a party of salarymen. There was no
staff in sight and KL had to yell several times before a harried man
came rushing out from somewhere to show us a table. Rustic wooden
benches in rustic wooden booth style enclosure surrounded by no other
patrons gave me a real sense of privacy.
Our server was an extremely friendly man, in fact he was flitting
around the restaurant for the duration of the meal striking up
conversation with every table (people started coming in soon after we
were seated). The rest of the staff was Korean from a young girl
to a very old woman. We wanted authentic Korean food, I think
Ozakkyo is pretty darn close, if not right on target.
The soup, Korean pancake and hotpot rice we ordered were small but
delicious. The seafood pancake was super crispy on the bottom but
I had a hard time seeing what kind of seafood was actually used.
Hotpot rice was also piping hot and flavorful. As for the soup,
it had to be good considering an entire spring chicken, red dates,
ginseng, chestnuts, garlic and sticky rice were used and cooked for a
very long time. The resulting soup was thick, creamy and
fragrant. The chicken was needless to say fall-off-the-bone
tender. The server asked me if I wanted its recipe which I
mistook him for asking if I owned
a recipe, so I said no. This restaurant isn't afraid to pass on
their trade secret!
Ozakkyo Shinjuku (
)-ku, Okubo
1-12-27 Tel: 03-5155-7294
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