Corridor Buzz - The Premier Source of Arts & Entertainment News and Information for the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor

REVIEW: Authentic meets affordable at Seoul Grill

By LaDawn Edwards

It’s great having friends with eclectic tastes, especially if you want to sample exotic flavors that you may never see advertised. My buddy Keith has a knack for sniffing out authentic Asian restaurants wherever he happens to be.

When Seoul Grill opened last year in Iowa City’s Old Capitol Center Keith gave me the good word: “I don’t think they even have a sign up yet, but the place was packed for dinner.” He reported that he and his companion were the only white people in there, which sounded extremely promising.

It’s taken way too long for me to follow his suggestion to come try the food, but I didn’t want to experience it with anyone else, so on a recent Wednesday we met for lunch. By 11:10, we were placing our order at the counter, in the small tidy restaurant filled with wonderful smells.

While waiting for Keith I’d looked through the takeout menu considering which dish I wanted to try, including the fun-sounding Bibimbop (mixed rice with veggies and beef or tofu) and the curry udon noodle soup. Keith had been thinking about the bibimbop himself, but he was gracious enough to order the more exotic spicy squid so that we weren’t eating the same thing. (Of course, I shared mine — there was plenty!)

It’s worth mentioning that, despite the artificial trees, this restaurant feels more elegant than its affordable prices or counter-service setup might suggest. Keith assured me that at dinner time Seoul Grill has table service, with servers whisking collections of tiny dishes of food out to diners. I certainly wouldn’t complain about trotting the 10 feet back to the counter to collect my chopsticks and my first taste of Korean food, because it is a little slice of heaven.

I was surprised to see the sunny-side up egg topping my bibimbop in a giant rice bowl, but upon further research I should probably be thankful that it wasn’t raw. I think the sticky rice that covered the bottom was cooked with red bean paste (often found in Asian candies and desserts) because the rice was a mottled pink. The cooked vegetables underneath the egg were arranged in lovely colorful wedges (like you’d see in a cheesecake sampler, but less fattening) with julienned carrots, bean sprouts, mushrooms and something plain and white that might be daikon radish. (If we’d had our own waiter I certainly would have gotten an ID on every morsel, but the man who took our order had a steady stream of customers the whole time we were eating, so I didn’t want to bother him.)

While I was admiring and sampling the contents of my bowl and the four condiment dishes — a tangy bright green seaweed sesame salad, a tan wrinkled substance that might be seitan (wheat gluten), kim chee (pickled cabbage) and a fermented dark bean — Keith told me about a children’s book he’d stumbled across in the Iowa City library that describes a girl’s anticipation of this traditional dish. It follows her trip to the market and her mother’s preparation of each vegetable and the egg, up to the celebrated moment when she digs her chopsticks into the center and gleefully stirs it all up. (I skipped that last step, since I wanted to appreciate each flavor separately, but maybe next time. I’ll probably spring for the extra dollar to have it served in the traditional heated stone bowl, too.) For those expecting merely a Korean version of fried rice, I’d say that fried rice compares to bibimbop as Tang’s collection of sugar and chemicals compares to a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice drank in a Florida orange grove — vaguely similar in ingredients but infinitely different in experience.

Keith’s spicy squid dish lived up to the three pepper warning on the menu. The mélange of tentacles, celery, onion and mushroom had him blowing his nose at least once during lunch. While I liked the dish, if I’d ordered it I’m sure I would have been looking for a way to tone it down in order to finish it.

At the end of our meal I didn’t merely feel full like I do at most American restaurants; I felt satisfied and nourished. It’s easy to see why Seoul Grill keeps packing in the customers. I am looking forward to sharing this place with more of my friends.