Go north on Highway 99 and Seattle changes from downtown highrises to overpriced bungalows. After Greenlake, it’s strip motels and auto repair shops, and then used car dealers and plumbing supply and adult video. Closer to Edmonds, the backlit plastic signs add a language. Korean supermarkets and restaurants appear in the low rise strip malls.
Korean food has been, to me, a guy in a headband standing behind a grill. You tell him which meat you want and he scoots it around in a circle until it’s done. I haven’t been for Korean food for a long time and perhaps this experience is to blame. Hosoonyi fixes that shallow first impression and now, I can see myself thinking, “North End. Korean. Now.”
We started with barley tea and a selection of kim chee dishes. There was the typical cabbage in red chili, but also tofu that had some kind of fish oil, a sort of sesame jello, bean sprouts with seaweed, a delicious browned potato, and medium spicy pickled daikon radish. We did order some BBQ, one spicy, one not spicy. I didn’t try it, but both plates were empty by the time we were done. We had a rather intense monkfish smothered in chili paste and bean sprouts. The seafood pancake, a giant crispy thing, was just about perfect, especially if you got a bit from the edge. Also delicious? The tofu soup. It arrives in an individual ceramic bowl at full boil and the server deftly cracks an egg into it with one hand. The octopus disappeared before I’d even tried it, so it must have been quite good, and while I didn’t eat the bbq meat, that didn’t stop me from picking up the remaining grilled onions which were blackened and spicy.
It’s about the beef, pork, and seafood, so there isn’t a lot of variety for veggie types at Hosoonyi, but what’s there is delicious. And it’s spicy stuff, I arrived cold and had peeled off my sweater and scarf by the time we were mid-dinner. If you have a big group, make a reservation and get a low table on the floor. Leave your shoes outside the raised room and pretend you’re somewhere exotic instead of in a strip mall on Highway 99. The place fills up – go early – that will leave you time to prowl the aisles of the Korean supermarket next door wondering how long it would take you to use up a five pound bag of chili powder.
We were 8 people. With a round of beers, the tab came to 18 dollars each. You could easily get out of there for less and when I go back, I’m just ordering the soup and the pancake for a perfect meal. The food was delicious, intense, and ideal for the season when the cold comes in with night. A big thumbs up for Hosoonyi.
Hosoonyi is at 23830 Highway 99 in Edmonds. If you’re driving north, it’s on the left side, just past 240th, in the same shopping center as the decidedly not Korean Pizza Hut.
Nerd’s Eye View refresher: We got rear-ended on the way home (we’re FINE, thanks, it was minor). When you’re flustered from the cruch of metal and honking drivers who can’t tell what happened, it’s hard to remember what to do. Here, from the State Farm Insurance site, are instructions for what to do after an accident.
[tags]Korean food, Hosoonyi[/tags]
It reads simply and completely delicous 🙂