We haven't had much luck finding good Korean food here in the East Bay. It's one of the those cuisines that I tend to go back to LA to eat. But I wanted to check out a few places in Oakland and we decided to stop downtown to try a Korean restaurant and pick up some staples at a local Korean market.
We don't make very frequent trips to downtown Oakland. We'd been once to go to dim sum, and my auto body shop is down there. So I was pretty surprised at how quick it was to get there in the middle of the day- only about 10 minutes from our house. We check out a place called Sam Won which was almost right off the freeway. The place didn't look so pretty from the outside and didn't have any windows, but when we walked in, it was filled with Asians, and there were even two Oakland cops having lunch there, so I was already feeling pretty good about it.
When we were seated, we were given menus and barley tea and decided to order off the lunch menu (they require a two order minimum of meat in order to grill on your own). Plus, the lunch menu wasn't too expensive, with most of the entrees coming in under $10.
I ended up getting an order of chicken, which came with rice and wakame soup. It was actually really good. The chicken was well seasoned and though I would've preferred to cooking it myself, I still enjoyed it a lot.
Meanwhile, they also gave us a full range of banchans, which were all quite tasty, and Tom got an order of bulgogi. He enjoyed his meat. Lastly, Tom got an order of shrimp tempura, which was really too much wood, and didn't look that great. The batter was pretty thick and just didn't look that appetizing.
Overall we enjoyed out lunch at Sam Won, and I'm happy that we were finally able to find a good Korean restaurant close to us. I look foward to out next trip soon.
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