Omogari & ZaZang: A Review of Korean Restaurants in San Jose

If you wish to try out good Korean food in the Bay Area in California, here are a couple of suggestions. These are two Korean restaurants of totally different ambiance and style.

Omogari Korean Restaurant is in downtown San Jose right in the heart of Japan town. Yes, it may seem a bit weird that in the strip of Japanese restaurants, anime stores, clothes shops and video rentals, there is a Korean restaurant that suddenly appears.

The place is a cozy, nice-looking place to eat. Not at all cheap-looking, but not enough to scare you to be too pricey either. The restaurant is not too big, but is just perfect for a rather quiet, warm meal.

Omogari's Stone Pot is, I believe, what it is famous for. The Dol Sat Bi-Bum Bab is a combination of beef, rice, vegetables and fried eggs in a hot pot. This is really something else. It deviates away from the regular soup in other Asian restaurants.

The Gal-Bee is a beef short ribs dish marinated in a special sauce. It is delicious, although some may find the sauce a little on the sweet side.

The Korean style ramen is interesting, but also has a sweet kick to it. The Kimchi fried rice seems intriguing but if you are not into very spicy dishes, you better watch out.

The menu warns the customers that some of their items are indeed served very hot, although you can request the servers to be a little kind to your tongue, if you cannot really handle the hotness in food.

Omogari offers a long list of choices of entree. They have Chicken Teriyaki. There is the Mul-Pa-Jun, a pan fried seafood and green onion concoction; the Tofu Kimchi and the famous Bee-Bim-Bab, a dish with sauteed mixed vegetable with beef and fried egg over rice.

The have a good selection of different soft tofu hot pot. They also have various kinds of stews like the Mae Eun Tong, a spicy fish soup with tofu. Take heed, it has 3 red stars next to it. A loud warning of the degree of its hotness.

For those who are of legal age to drink alcohol, you may want to try a bottle of soju. Although quite costly at $10 for a bottle, one bottle should be enough if you just want to satisfy your curiosity. Soju is a distilled beverage and traditionally made from rice. Its taste is somewhat comparable to vodka, and just like how we were warned, it is really a strong drink.

Now if you want to try out Korean cooking like it came out of a mother's kitchen you may want to check out ZaZang.

Housed in a very simple and modest structure, the people welcome you in their native tongue, complete with a warm smile. The servers seem to be in a hurry trying to get orders and serving hot meals, but they are polite just the same.

The place is like a simple eatery where you can enjoy the famous zazang myun, a dish composed of flour-based noodles with black bean sauce. This is what we really drove for. And we were not disappointed. The noodles were quite chunky, and the sauce quite delicious and unique.

What makes ZaZang unique is because of the fact that it serves pizza. Where else can you find that? A Korean restaurant serving pizza. There is nothing outrageous about their pizza flavors. They have the regular cheese, salamis and what have you. But maybe they added this to their menu to please the little ones who joined their parents to this restaurant, but whose palates might have been already westernized.

ZaZang has pot stickers cooked in different ways: fried, boiled and steamed. This may sound yummy partnered with their rice plates. They have Stir Fried Rice (fried rice with a choice of beef, chicken or shrimp with za zang sauce), Jap Chae Bap (noodles stir fried with vegetables over steam rice) and Zam Pong Bap (a spicy seafood and vegetable soup with steamed rice).

They offer udon, of course, and a few choices of specialty food cooked in sweet and sour style, or in other specialty sauces. The Soon Dae seems interesting as this is a sausage made of clear noodle and vegetables.

They offer combination meals also so you can enjoy a meal with noodles, rice, soup and vegetables.

Naturally, they allow you to order to go, as we did with the zazang myun. But it seemed different when eaten at home. Perhaps the flavors come out more distinctly when served hot in front of you, with the right amount of sauce mixed into it, and with the friendly lady servers saying Komnapsamnida (thank you) in the flair only Koreans can do.

If you wish to visit Omogari, check out Japan town at East Jackson Street in San Jose. ZaZang is in Stevens Creek, Cupertino.