Katsu and Hae Woon Dae: The Binkin-a-Thon Continues

LTH,

The Binkin-a-Thon continued last evening with Katsu for a wonderfully delicious start and Hae Woon Dae for a rousing Korean BBQ filled finish. Katsu was dead-on last night, salmon sashimi, which can be a bit pedestrian, was fresh, fatty, rich almost to the point of suggesting Katsu rename it sake-toro. Nigiri scallop from Seattle had a slightly meaty texture and brought walks along a spring beach to mind with a hint of the sea.



In addition to the above, and a number of other delicious sashimi/nigiri, Haruko, one of the nicest people in the city of Chicago, conspired with Katsu on a couple of natto courses. First up was natto combined with small chunks of tuna and slivered nori. CrazyC immediately became a whirling dervish of activity as she whipped the natto to within an inch of it's life. The whisking effect bringing out, even more, the long thready strands.

Natto w/tuna


The second natto course was AgiDashiDofu with natto, Nametake mushrooms in wonderfully rich sauce topped with grated daikon. This preparation allowed the 'nature' of natto to come through a bit more, and with natto you can get some really funky limburgeresque flavors. Though this was not to that scale.

Natto w/AgiDashiDofu


Katsu sent out a perfectly prepared, crisp, greasless, delicious Japanese pumkin tempura.


Yellowtail jaw was terrific, buttery rich, yet with an airiness that is mostly indescribable.


Tongue with just a squeeze of lemon and shake of salt or shichimi-togarashi is one of my favorites.


And, in keeping with the current LTHForum theme of tripe, we had Katsu's perfectly prepared version, with, as Josephine noted, it's crisp caramelized edges, served with a toasted sesame oil/scallion dipping sauce.


We finished with complimentary oranges, so deliciously sweet that our brains were saying enough, sated, thanks for feeding both body and soul.


But, good LTHers were are, we soldiered on, Hae Woon Dae awaited.

As evidenced from the turnout, which I could not attend, at the LSC portion of the Wednesday Binkin-a-Thon, LTHers know how to show an out of town visitor a good time, and we got right into the business at hand, Korean BBQ.

With a group I like to order one of Hae Woon Dae's set dinners, in this case the $99 dinner for 5, even though there were 7 of us we were not exactly ravenous after Katsu. With the set dinners you get a wide array of additional dishes, including seafood pancake (panjun), choice of noodle, choice of soup, many, many, panchan, including, at least last evening, raw crab, and BBQ choices. Kalbi was, as always, wonderful, pork delicious, octopus, octorific as always, but CrazyC's choice of fresh bacon really hit the spot.

Korean BBQ


Raw Crab


CrazyC did most of the cooking last evening, thanks Charlotte.


BBQ Octopus


My wife and I had, as always, a wonderful time, great food, interesting conversation and the chance to meet Binkin, a fellow traveler on our little portion of the Information Superhighway.

Enjoy,
Gary

Katsu Japanese Restaurant
2651 W Peterson Ave
Chicago, IL. 60659
773-784-3383
5pm - 10PM
Closed Tuesday

Hae Woon Dae
6240 N. California
Chicago, IL. 60659
773-764-8018

G Wiv wrote:LTH,
My wife and I had, as always, a wonderful time, great food, interesting conversation and the chance to meet Binkin, a fellow traveler on our little portion of the Information Superhighway.

Enjoy,
Gary

Looks like a blast! Binkin's quite lucky!

Thanks for the pictures, Gary. That samgyupsal (bacon) looks amazing ... thick cut with a nice, even fat to meat ratio.

I usually trek out to Gimga Nae in the suburbs for my samgyupsal fixes, but I'll definitely have to include an order of samgyupsal the next time I hit up Hae Woon Dae.


Gimga Nae
358 Townline Rd
Mundelein
847-949-9900

G Wiv wrote:Natto w/tuna

Thank you for posting the lovely food pics; My wife has been obsessed w/ natto recently (after I mentioned the LTH-er's seeming fondest for the fermented bean), and has been making maguro-natto and iga-natto quite often of late (too often, as I cannot stand the smell myself... )

I hope nobody minds my adding photos which are essentially the same as G Wiv's! Here are my memories of the evening, which started around 7ish and lasted until, oh, 11 or 11:30?

First we went to Katsu, where Charlotte scored a rockstar parking spot. Katsu and his wife are both charming, especially Haruko, who asked where else I'd be eating while in Chicago and discussed how many pizzas she could consume.

The meal began with a salad of soybean (I am 99% sure) sprouts and abura-age (deep-fried tofu pockets, the ones that are simmered in a sweet soy-based sauce to make inari sushi) slices, dressed with a very cool and refreshing soy and vinegar sauce of some sort. Even though it was basically just an amuse, I really enjoyed this and would like to make it at home for lunchboxes.

The next thing to appear was, I believe, the sushi and sashimi. So, photo first, then fish-by-fish through the plate:



Starting at the near side we had giant sea scallops from Seattle as nigiri, with a yellow roe on top. I've never eaten raw scallops before, and these were meltingly soft and tasted like the sea. They have probably spoiled plain ol' scallops for me. Unfortunately I was so busy enjoying the scallop that I didn't really notice the rice, although that is probably not necessarily a bad thing. As you can see, though, the scallop was cut quite large and concealed the rice altogether.

Next: uni. When we were ordering, G Wiv asked if I liked uni, and I somehow heard "unagi" and said yes. I'd never eaten uni (for the same reason I'd never eaten raw scallops: no source I trusted), so I've got no basis for comparison, but it was really delicious. Briny and... something that I picked up when I exhaled through my nose, probably just more briny flavor. For me the piece was a little bit too large; I would've liked it to have been smaller because I felt like it was in my mouth just a tad too long. Then again, I'm a slow chewer. It was a fantastic taste, though.

Next, the salmon sashimi, which put all other raw salmon I've had to shame. I think the photos of this salmon tell you everything you need to know about it.

I can't quite remember the other two sashimi; one is bluefin, I believe. They were also very good; exactly the right temperature and a tender mouthfeel.

Next, nattou maguro with nori strips:


I've been eating nattou fairly regularly but haven't really fallen in love with its taste and texture. However, this dish may have converted me. The contrast in texture between the soft tuna and the sticky, slimy nattou was amazing.

Nattou dish number two: agedashi nattou:


Agedashi dofu is one of my favorite dishes; I love grated daikon together with shouyu and dashi and they went equally well with the nattou stuffed into an abura age pouch. It was topped with kaiware (radish sprouts) and had nametake mushrooms in the broth; as G Wiv mentioned, there was no nasty limburgeresque taste to the nattou in this preparation.

The yellowtail jaw (hamachi kama?):


I love fish collar, and this was a very simple shioyaki presentation (just salt grilled). Katsu squeezed the lemon over the fish and poured soy on the grated daikon. The pickled ginger (right?) was very tangy and hot. The fish was cooked perfectly, in my opinion.

Pumpkin tempura:


I assumed this was kabocha tempura, or Japanese squash, but Katsu appeared at the table and said it was special, because it was American pumpkin tempura. I would expect to see this more in the fall than in the spring, but since the weather was cold and rainy I didn't mind it at all. The tempura was executed well, with a light, crispy crust and perfectly-cooked pumpkin, still with a little bite to it.

Next, beef tripe, including an Action Shot of the pumpkin tempura being dipped into its accompanying sauce:


Another thing I'd never eaten before: tripe. This was simply grilled and really was lovely. Its texture reminded me of squid in a pleasant way. If you're going to try tripe, I would recommend this preparation.

After the tripe we had beef tongue:


Paper-thin, grilled, salted, with a squeeze of lemon, which brought out the extremely beefy flavor of the tongue.

Finally, some magically sweet oranges; when we mentioned how amazingly good they were, Haruko informed us that it was because Katsu had prayed for them to be good.
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While I tried valiantly to save room by eating sparingly at Katsu, I was unable to resist the wiles of the dishes pictured above, so I was already quite full by the time we arrived at Hae Woon Dae. I got around this by deciding that Korean BBQ has its own separate compartment in the human stomach; this strategy got me through at least most of the meal - my first Korean BBQ experience ever.

Thanks to Charlotte's Korean skills, we managed to figure out a table arrangement; unfortunately, with two tables, I was fairly distant from half the attendees so conversation was not as easy as I would have liked. After the soju started flowing I may or may not have noticed this, though.

First to arrive were the panchan, which were legion:


I didn't try even half of them, unfortunately; the cabbage kimchi and acorn jelly landed near my plate and I ate a lot of those two, along with the sweet syrupy potatoes and what I think was vinegared sliced radish (the large white circles). The spicy raw blue crab arrived last. I really enjoyed its texture, which was kind of jelly-like, but there was a licorice-like flavor to it that I didn't like, so I didn't eat much of it. I think I complained about the licorice-like flavor at length. Thanks, soju!

We also had seafood panjun, jap chae (aka the noodle dish that shows up, sans beef, in every bento at every fast food bento place ever), seafood soup, and plenty of meat to go around. CrazyC made one hell of a grillmaster, and also made the best choice of the meal when she ordered the sam gyup sal, or Korean bacon.

Frankly at this point everything felt like an orgy of eating, and I am hard pressed to give descriptions of each individual item; instead, I offer this photo of beer and fire:


Soju and a bubbling cauldron of seafood soup:


And my seafood soup shrimp dragon (does that make it a soup dragon?):


Thanks to all who came out for this dinner! I was very lucky on this trip to Chicago. I do have to admit that I couldn't eat a thing until 5pm the following day, so I didn't make it to Pilsen for tacos....