Hongeo sahm-hop looks innocent enough.
“Oooh they have Korean-style fermented skate,” my friend Chef Sung Kim said as she perused the menu at Jeunju in Mokja Golmok or Eater’s Alley, which surrounds the Murray Hill LIRR station. “I’ve never had it,” she said of the delicacy hongeo-hoe.
I’d been eating at the homestyle Korean restaurant ever since my pal John Choe turned me on to it and thought it was high time to turn my posse of food loving friends on to Chef Eunhae Bae’s wonderful takes on samgyetang, the Korean ginseng chicken soup that’s renowned as a tonic during the dog days of summer, and gamjatang, a hearty pork spine stew. Fermented fish was the furthest thing from my mind that summer evening, but not being a group to shy away from culinary challenges we took Sung’s lead and ordered the hongeo-hoe. After all, how bad could it be? (more…)
