Soban — Restaurant in Los Angeles

If you live in or around L.A. and you like food, you probably know about Soban and three dishes that have become local dining imperatives: their Ganjang Ge Jang (marinated raw crab), Eun Dae Gu Jorin (braised spicy black cod), and Galbi Jjim (braised beef short ribs).

What may be taken for granted about Soban is the variety of banchan served prior to your actual meal. Here, their pungent mini-platters are blessed with bold, funky flavors, and transcend the trivial pickled fare that you may be expecting, instead delivering a veritable multi-plate feast for ambitious eaters. As I held my drool in my mouth, Soban's owner described the thirteen small dishes she placed in front of me and answered my questions about each item in detail, from the sinus-clearing Kkakdoogi (radish kimchi) to the pleasingly fusty Eomuk Bokkeum (sliced fish cake). My favorite of these initial offerings was the stoic Gagi Namul (seasoned eggplant) for its velvety texture and its robust savoriness, though I could have eaten a dinner-sized portion of any of the banchan and left happy.

Sometime around mid-meal, I was presented with a final bansang: kimchi mini-pancakes (Kimchi Jeon) served to me fresh and hot, arguably the best complimentary bite of food I ate all year. Although miniature in size, they make a whopping impression. The semi-sweet batter is mixed with piquant bits of fermented cabbage to create a delightfully uneven consistency that is chewy, crunchy, and faintly east of greasy enough.

As for those three aforementioned popular plates evangelized by J-Gold's seminal LA Weekly review that everyone is still swooning over 9 years later? Yes, yes, and yes!

Soban's founders are from Korea's south Jeolla-do province, where Ganjang Ge Jang is a regional specialty, and you should not leave here without trying it. They serve the raw crab among sliced onions and scallions, half-immersed in a thin marinade of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, herbs, and taeyang-cho (sun-dried Korean chilies). A clean marine aroma emanates from the bowl, gently sharpened and sweetened by the odor of the fresh onions. Soban imports its crabs from South Korea -- they use a specific breed called kkotge (Korean flower crab) that resembles a Maryland blue crab. Upon breaking apart the roe-dotted shell with the scissors provided, you'll notice the meat is gelatinous and that the mechanics of eating this dish ain't gonna be easy. I suspect using a straw to suck the meat out of the shell may have been a better option than picking at it with chopsticks. At a certain point, you may become frustrated as I did, surrendering to your primal urge to slurp directly from the shell, letting the flavorful mix of marinade and ocean jelly slither into your mouth, almost instantly dissolving on your tongue. This, my friends, is the good stuff.

Also good is the Eun Dae Gu Jorim, consisting of chunks of bone-in sablefish braised in a spicy and sweet sauce. The fiery, fragrant broth is thick and lively, though spiced so that it implies a teeming pot of a murky December afternoon stiffly infused with ginger and gochujang. The wiggly meat is silky and tender, sharing its bowl with hearty discs of mu (Korean white radish, similar to Daikon) and garaetteok (rice cakes).

If you absolutely require a more terrestrial entrée, you won't miss the signature home-cooked quality of this kitchen by choosing the Gaalbi Jjim: a traditional bowl of caramelized beef short ribs that have been long-stewed in a sweet soy-based sauce with carrots, chestnuts, ginkgo nuts, garaetteok, and mushrooms. The mushrooms are noteworthy, as they absorb the sauce, a rich and redolent elixir, and help deliver more of it into each bite, where it needs to be.

The service offered by the owner at 11am on a Tuesday was doting and motherly. Busier times may not allow for the same level of service, but if other diners get even half the attention and menu insight I got, they will...

Before I even start on the food, let’s talk about the basic respect first. I don’t want to use the word “racist” as my friends and me are all East Asians. But if you are not speaking Korean. You will be discriminated. We ordered our food 10 min before another table of Korean customers got seated. How ever, they got Banchan way before their first dish was served and ofc way before us. Ironically, they got their seafood pancake served first after we ordered the exact same dish 15 min ahead. We were frustrated and hungry with an empty table while the Korean customers beside us who arrived 10 min later were enjoying Banchan and the same dish we ordered 15 min earlier.

To all people that read Chinese, here’s the advice:

他们歧视中国人，不要到他们的店进行消费。

Now, let’s talk about the food:

Good tasting dish:

Braised short rib. The flavor was creamy and spicy. They might put in honey to give that caramelized flavor. However, it’s over $50 for a serving size of a normal stone pot.

Mediocre dish:

Marinated raw crab

It’s said to be the highlight of this restaurant, but i don’t really like the flavor. The bitterness flavor overwhelmed the sweetness of the raw crab meat. And it only came with one crab unlike what was shown on Mark Wien from YTB where two crabs were served (nor they suggest the quantity on the menu).

Seafood pancake

Just typical Korean seafood pancake flavor/texture. And the chef over cooked 2 pancakes with very burned black crust. The sauce was deadly salty! Definitely not worth 26 dollars.

Bad tasting dish:

Fish roe soup The bitterness from chrysanthemum overwhelmed the soup. The fish roe was very fishy tasting suggesting they didn’t treat it properly. And the texture was not creamy suggesting the roe was cooked in the boiled soup without any pretreatment.

We ended up paying $170 before tax/tip for 4 very common Korean dish. You can Judge by your standard, but I think it’s way over priced for this food quality/quantity and service. Let alone the discriminations we suffered.

I would not recommend this restaurant at all due to it’s discriminative service, mediocre tasting and overpriced menu. Also they really know how to advertise themselves. The owners should spend more time on the food and service instead of advertising with food bloggers.

If you read here, go somewhere else if you are looking for good Korean food. Plenty of choices in KTown.

UPDATE： response to the owner

The customers at the other table got their menu and ordered the food at the table. Do they need the menu if they had called and ordered? So don’t try to gaslight the situation. Is it so hard to apologize and admit it? I know you don’t even think you did anything wrong. And don’t take your Dad’s China experience as an excuse to justify the discrimination. Your dad didn’t take the order or served us. It’s the servers maybe you or your mom took the order. I always respect family business and I grew up eating mom-pop restaurants. But being a family business doesn’t justify you being...

Soban is one of those places where you know they care about their food and their customers, so you want to love them. However, the quality of the food is not what it used to be. Either that, or simply put, inconsistent.

I ordered the raw crab marinated in soy sauce (간장게장), spicy black cod (은대구조림), and spicy cod soup (대구탕).

My dad and I were actually really looking forward to eating the ganjang gejang here. I remember really enjoying the food here during our visits in the past. However, this time, the ganjang gejang was incredibly disappointing. The raw soy crab did not taste fresh. If you are paying $43 for a dish, I think it’s reasonable to say that you’d at the very least, expect your food to taste fresh.

The daegutang was also pretty disappointing. The soup was tasteless. I understand if the soup is less salty to cater towards a certain customer base. (For example, some of my asian friends have complained about western food being too salty). However, the soup wasn’t spicy either, leaving it tasting like some watered down soup. The server did bring us more salt to season, when requested but it didn’t help save the dish altogether. Though, at least we tried.

The saving grace was the eun daegu jorim (and the side dishes). However, you don’t really go to a restaurant and pay for mains just for good appetizers. The eun daegu jorim was well seasoned and the fish was quite well cooked. However, if you are paying $43 for a dish, you kind of expect to get your money’s worth.

The service was slow but that’s kind of understandable, since there was only one server attending to the customers. I truly sympathize with restaurants that are trying to make meets end during this pandemic.

However, the food in itself was quite...