Yuchun Restaurant — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Yuchun is my go to spot for Korean noodles and dumplings in Los Angeles.

I must note in advance though that the service is not that great. Essentially, this restaurant is a great example of a restaurant serving amazing food but lacks in service. If you are asian, I am sure you can think of a handful of restaurants like this. Regardless however, I can almost guarantee, that you will find yourself coming back for the food.

Yuchun is known for their cold noodles, whether this is their mul naengmyeon (물냉면) or bibim naengymyeon (비빔냉면). The main difference between the two is one is served with a cold broth* and the other is served with a cold sweet and spicy, red sauce.

*In case you are not familiar with how to eat mul naengmyeon, you are generally given vinegar and horseradish to season your cold broth to your taste. The white vinegar gives the broth a tanginess and the yellow horseradish sauce is there to give it a little kick if you like spicy foods. Do note that horseradish sauce is in essence what is used to create wasabi. If you add too much it will affect your nasal cavity first.

Yuchun is also known for their (김치왕만두) or giant steamed kimchi dumplings. I absolutely love these dumplings and would 10/10 recommend! The restaurant sells its frozen dumplings by the bag so you can purchase them if you would like.

While you are there, do not forget to take advantage of the self service hot broth offered. It’s called yooksoo (육수), or savory beef stock. People typically drink this before eating the cold noodles.

In case you needed further elaboration regarding my note above, this location gets pretty packed during the day and the staff is understaffed, with the more skilled kitchen workers occasionally not being present, leading to Yuchun being “sold out” of menu items. Service may also be a bit worse to guests who do not speak Korean as the hired staff are generally Korean and/or speak limited English.

If service is king for you, you may not like this restaurant. However, I highly recommend you to at least try the food before making a verdict.

(By the way, the noodles at this location are better than the ones at the new location that opened up in...

Update May 2025

After trying the Buena Park location, I had to come back and make sure it was just the location and not the whole franchise that went downhill. Happy to say, the KTown location is still serving up great self service broth and cold noodles! We also tried the beef tofu soup, which was a bit light on flavor but edible. The gal I was tasty, but had a few very fatty and chewy pieces that were an issue. We got lucky with parking, but can definitely be an issue when busy. Service was friendly for a Korean restaurant, which is always nice. Will have to come back for the giant dumpling and noodles the table next to us were eating :) ——- Second time trying this place and have to say I’m happy I came back. First time I was underwhelmed with the neng myun, which they are known for but loved the free beef bone broth so much, I thought I would come back and try some of their other hot soup dishes. Well there were three of us (mom and sis) so we decided to order three dishes and share. Neng myun with kalbi combo, spicy neng myun and hand cut noodles with clam.

The two neng myun dishes were excellent. Much. Enter than my first trip. The hand cut noodles were also really very good. The only mediocre item was the kalbi. Nothing special and a bit fatty.

Why 5 stars then? The free broth! It’s truly amazing. I might just order noodles next time and pour in some free broth :)

Service was also pretty amazing, especially for a Korean...

Eugh. While their cold noodles are decent, their tonkatsu is absolute garbage. Am I eating a bunch of elongated, thin rubber strips or pork? The breaded crumbs look like eraser shavings from a pencil. Even what should've been decent rice was replaced with a ball of clumped up, dry white grains. In terms of how utterly disgusting it was, this would be how I describe it.

A single bite of the meat was probably the most regrettable thing in my day--And my go-to tonkatsu restaurant costs $10 LESS than this cow pie!

And, to be honest, it also pissed me off that there's an empty slot in the box that usually includes a side. And no, I don't mean the contained side dishes that comes with the order. What should usually be here would be, say, some sort of mac-n-cheese lookalike that makes the food surprisingly a tad better. This $15 food doesn't even have that.

Overall, definitely the worst place to order tonkatsu. I really hope whatever "meat" they serve here isn't as awful as whatever I unfortunately ate and is lying inside my stomach.

As a lover of tonkatsu, this was incredibly disappointing despite their cold noodles. :(

TL; DR PRO(s): cold noodles. That's the only thing making up the two stars. CONS: mystery "meat"/rubbery thing that looks like meat, horrible taste, lack of decent side inside box,...