Keum Sung Restaurant

KOREA 🇰🇷

[UPDATE: At some point, they changed the name from Geum to Keum, and the new awning shows this as well]

You can also find this restaurant listed under the name Kum Sung Chik Naengmyun in some places, but for ease of readers I will simply list this as what I can read from the awning outside. With naengmyun in the name, it will definitely be a good idea to visit this restaurant for the namesake when the weather is warm again.

On this cold night, all diners were cranking up the fires at their table to eat various meals on the inverted copper grills. We decided to go for the kimchi bulgogi ($18.99 per person, below) because of some terrific online word of mouth. This price is quite a deal when everything is added up in the end because it includes a mountain of meat, all the banchan of course, plus a dish of tasty fried potatoes before everything. I had never seen so many plates of banchan before, which all had an impressively colorful freshness to them.

When you place your order, one of the kind servers will bring the ingredients over, scissor a big chunk of kimchi up for the base, then start placing the bulgogi on top. Onions and mushrooms and peppers are also a part of this mixture and everything starts to sizzle while the fats and delicious juices all coalesce in the outer ring of the copper pan.

As the meat cooks and turns brown you can start picking off anything you want, making bites with different portions of each ingredient to find your best case scenario. Eat enough and someone will come by to put more meat on the grill and pour more oils on to cool everything down a bit. The boiling does not take long to start up again though, and with each minute gone by everything keeps getting better and better.

One of the great things about this food is that no matter how much you keep eating, you won't feel horribly bloated and uncomfortable. The meats are lean and the vegetables give almost a cleansing affect.

But eventually everything is finished and the meal comes to end, which itself is not such a great feeling, but luckily a far cry from the physical displeasure of overeating that can happen with other meals. The pot is left with crispy burnt remains and a ring of juice around the outside that I took a few spoonfuls from. The tartness of vinegar and the fatty savories of the meat combine with the spicy kimchi to make an incredible broth.

If I could have been guaranteed that no one was watching me, I would have picked up the pot and slurped it all down. But unfortunately everyone is very attentive here, and that would have definitely lost face for me and my tribe.

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MURRAY HILL Queens
40-07 149th Place