Nothing Like a Feast (Choong Mo Ro)

I got out of the cab since we were at the corner and the light was red and I am totally impatient. The problem is that we weren't at the corner of 32nd and 5th, we were at 33rd and 5th (since we were going west AND I had to walk next to the Empire State building I should have realized it wasn't possible, but I wasn't really thinking). On the plus side, by the time I had walked over to Broadway and then back, I was really in the mood for Korean. Luckily that's where we were going: Choong Mo Ro.

I was meeting two guys I used to work with, E and J (J is in town for a couple of weeks, which is always a great excuse for those of us who live here to get to see each other).

Korean is a great excuse for a huge feast.

And on a cold night, like we've been having, it's great to have the barbeque going. I love the pancakes, so I always suggest that as an appetizer. They had an option with hot peppers (my picture didn't come out). It was really good. Then we had to choose the meat that we wanted to barbeque. My favorite is galbi (bulgogi is second). We got the galbi, but then had pork ribs as well - they were a little fatty for me. The galbi was okay, though I've had better.

The appetizers were an okay assortment, some of my favorites (like kimchi, sometimes the basics are the best), but some of the others I didn't love.
They offered lettuce, rice paper and daikon wraps for the meat. I hadn't had that many options previously and I enjoyed the variety. There were also a couple of nice dips, one with salt (and we all know that I like salt).

And we ordered a pork entree. I usually get so caught up in the barbeque that that's all I get, so this was an interesting bit of variety.

The atmosphere was nice, the pancake was really good, the meat was okay - overall, a decent meal, though not my favorite in the city. No worries, just gives me an excuse to keep trying other places.