Koreana Restaurant

Blog post May 2010

Lunch today at Koreana, the restaurant attached to the Korean supermarket H & Y in Hicksville. As with all Korean restaurants, the fun begins right after you order when the waiter brings over a selection of banchan, little dishes of kimchee and other vegetable-based tidbits. We ordered the mandu dumplings that I enjoyed on my last visit to Koreana, as well as a plate of BonChon drumsticks that Joan Reminick included in her roundup of best chicken on Long Island.

Soup was the main event today. I got the Sulrong Tang (pictured above), beef-bone broth containing noodles and slices of brisket. For a while now, I have been trying to cultivate a taste for Korean bone broth—it’s a milky white broth made from boiling meatless bones—but I cannot get past its essential blandness. My soup was served with a little dish of salt that I was instructed to add on my own; perhaps I just didn’t add enough.

My friend had no such seasoning issues. Her Jjampong, spicy seafood noodle soup, was brimming with flavor, thick noodles and all manner of sea creatures.

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Whether or not Korean food is a personal favorite, you're sure to enjoy the BonChon chicken, which is featured prominently on the menu. The proprietory recipe, franchised out to venues nationwide, is for fried chicken wings and drumstick that are glazed with either a sweet soy garlic or hot sauce. In either flavor, the chicken is truly delicious and lives up to its claim of staying with the chicken rather than coming off on the hands.

In other respects, this attractive little Korean restaurant attached to an Asian market offers all the requisites like bibim bap, jap chae and galbi. Service is pleasant and efficient.