By Joseph Nian
With the winter season kicking in at full throttle, my friends and I looked out for food to warm ourselves up from the freezing weather. As I scrolled through social media, I fell upon a video on a restaurant named Paik’s Noodles, famous for its large portions of food, spot-on take on Chinese-Korean cuisine, and most notably for its owner: Chef Paik Jong Won.
Known famously in Korea for his exquisite cooking and cooking media, Paik Jong Won never falls short of amazing. Recently, a Korean cooking show titled “Culinary Class Wars” began to skyrocket in popularity on Netflix, racking up millions of views in just a few days. As one of the two main judges on the show, Paik Jong Won was soon crowned as “Korean Gordon Ramsay” for his harsh but insightful advice to other chefs.
When I heard the restaurant we were going to eat at was owned by such a famous person, my expectations were high. As a Chinese person who has always been interested in Korean food, I have always wanted to try Korean-Chinese fusion dishes, especially jjajangmyeon, which are black bean noodles with pork or seafood. When my friends and I sat down, I obviously ordered jjajangmyeon, but with chilis to warm myself up from the cold weather. But as you can see from the picture above, there were a lot of really spicy chilis that would end up knocking me out for the rest of the night.
All in all, Paik’s Noodles was a restaurant with delicious Korean Chinese food, although I can’t determine if it is good Korean Chinese food as I’ve never had any in the past. But seeing how many people were waiting outside to enjoy the famous chef’s food, I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t a waste of money or time. So go try out Paik’s Noodles, it was a really fun experience!