We Found It! L.A.’s Hottest Dish

In a neighborhood on the southern fringe of Koreatown, on a deserted section of Pico across the street from a pupuseria famous for the armed guard that loiters in its doorway, the Korean barbecue restaurant Kong-Joo feels like a latter-day speakeasy, a speakeasy dedicated to the great brotherhood of goat eaters.

Though broiled kid dinners were legal the last time I checked, something about the place inspires skulking. Possibly it’s the dining room’s train configuration, long and narrow, an aisle running the length of the restaurant, that makes you feel 15% more raffish than you actually are. Or it could be that you’re in a restaurant dedicated to a foodstuff that three out of four Americans spurn.

Late-model cars double and triple park in the lot behind the restaurant, and backed-up Hyundais spill out onto the street. People duck into the place, smoking cigarettes, crowding into the open space by the kitchen door, pretending to listen to the tiny classical music that pours from a small radio. Fans whir from a dozen gleaming smoke hoods over a dozen tabletop grills, and half the people in the room read Korean-language newspapers while they eat. Though Kong-Joo is not a place you just happen to stop by, you can smell the garlic fog from as far as a block away.

A man gets up, carries a porcelain pitcher to the cash register desk, and slams it down, lid off, with an expectant look on his face. He’s thirsty. A busboy peers inside it, then takes it off to the kitchen to be filled. The pitchers, which are on most of the tables, are filled with a clear spirit, probably Korean rice wine, that tastes something like dilute vodka.

After you’ve stood in the doorway for a while, somebody will notice you and point you toward an empty table, probably one piled high with dishes, pans and bowls. It’ll be clean soon enough, and covered with your own little bowls of kimchee and pickles and stewed chunks of potato.

The photocopied menu at Kong-Joo lists a couple dozen dishes, from beef-tripe casserole to roasted covina, but almost everybody orders the goat B.B.Q., a big plate of chilied goat with scallion tops and minty Korean herbs--the food is a bright, Christmasy red and green--that you cook on the flat grill in front of you. The goat comes from the kitchen already done medium-well, stewy but firm to the bite like a good Mexican adobado , chile and garlic subduing most of the gamy taste you might associate with goat.

It mostly braises rather than crisps on the grill--a waitress periodically ladles on some broth to keep things steamy, though you can find a way to brown your meat if you put your mind to it--and the herbs cook down to a delicious fragrant mush. You dip it in a sauce you mix yourself from sesame oil, mustard seeds and searingly hot prepared mustard. The slight, low-octane sweetness of the teapot hootch resonates through the spices like a struck bell.

You also might want to try the goat soup, a fiery red broth which seems to have the intense goatiness that the B.B.Q. lacks: a spectacular dish. The soup is possibly the spiciest single dish to be had in the city of Los Angeles, breathtaking, rice-gobbling hot, and comes with a bowl of sliced chiles and several cloves worth of sliced raw garlic if you’re in a mood to improve on the chef’s excesses.

Finally, a certifiably hot restaurant.

Kong-Joo Restaurant, 3029 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 737-9487. Open Monday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Cash only. Parking in rear. Dinner for two, food only, about $15.