Korean BBQ
Korean barbecue means one thing here: a grill set into the table, and meat you cook in front of you. Not a tofu house, not fried chicken, not a kitchen that grills the short rib and carries it out. That line decides every restaurant in this collection, and it is why some famous names are missing from it.
Ten guides, drawn where the grills actually are rather than where the city limits fall. Los Angeles is Koreatown and needs no apology. Manhattan is six blocks around West 32nd Street. Queens is a five-mile belt along Northern Boulevard. Seattle turned out to be Puget Sound, Chicago turned out to be two pages, and San Francisco turned out to be smaller than its reputation.
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Korean BBQ in Los Angeles: Sixth Street, Eighth Street, Vermont and Western, and the San Fernando ValleyLos Angeles, California
Koreatown, inside the City of Los Angeles: twenty-four tabletop grills, eighteen on West 6th, West 3rd, Wilshire, West 8th, Olympic, Vermont and Western, and three twenty miles north in the San Fernando Valley.
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Korean BBQ in Manhattan: West 32nd Street, Fifth Avenue and Five Rooms Beyond KoreatownManhattan Korean BBQ, New York
West 32nd Street between Fifth and Broadway carries six of the borough's eighteen grills, seven more stand a block east and south on Fifth Avenue and the cross streets, and five sit outside Koreatown, from West 22nd Street to East 58th.
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Korean BBQ in Queens: 149th Place, Downtown Flushing, Northern Boulevard East and BeyondQueens Korean BBQ, New York
The Kimchi Belt: five miles east from Flushing along Northern Boulevard through Murray Hill, Auburndale, Bayside and Little Neck.
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Korean BBQ in Brooklyn: Gowanus, Downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg and Surf AvenueBrooklyn Korean BBQ, New York
A complete borough census rather than a best-of — every tabletop grill in Brooklyn, in four of its sixty-nine neighborhoods.
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Korean BBQ in London: the West End, Paddington, Clerkenwell, and the boroughs south and eastLondon Korean BBQ, England
Grills across eight boroughs, from Westminster and Camden out to Lewisham, Greenwich, Newham and Merton.
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Korean BBQ in Chicago: eleven rooms with grills at the table, from Lincoln Square to ChinatownChicago, Illinois
Inside the city limits, scattered rather than clustered: Chinatown, Wicker Park, the West Loop, Streeterville, and three on the north side.
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Korean BBQ in Chicago's North Suburbs: Niles and GlenviewChicago North Suburbs, Illinois
Niles and Glenview, where Chicago's Korean barbecue actually concentrated after Lawrence Avenue thinned out.
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Korean BBQ in San Francisco: the Richmond, Japantown, the Inner Sunset and Union SquareSan Francisco Korean BBQ, California
Three clusters that share no walking radius: the Richmond's Geary corridor, Inner Sunset's 9th Avenue, and Japantown's Post Street.
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Korean BBQ in the South Bay: El Camino Real, Kiely Boulevard, Stevens Creek and FremontSouth Bay, California
Santa Clara, Sunnyvale and Fremont, at the south end of the Bay — Fremont across the water in Alameda County — where the Bay Area's tabletop grilling actually is.
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Korean BBQ in Puget Sound: tabletop grills from Capitol Hill to Pacific Highway SouthPuget Sound, Washington
Four suburban corridors: Pacific Highway S in Federal Way, Highway 99 in Lynnwood, S Tacoma Way in Lakewood, and Aurora Ave N in Shoreline.
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