Review: At Tosokchon, Korean Hangover Soup That Does the Trick | Eater NY
"Located at 14 East 33rd Street just east of Fifth Avenue, this recently opened spot (about three months) seats roughly 50 and resembles an ahanok, with paper screens and dangling folk motifs; owner Sang W. Kim also runs branches in Annandale, Virginia and Palisades Park, New Jersey. Many dishes are homestyle: tteokbokki ($12) — tubular rice cakes in sticky red gochujang with flattened sheets of fishcake — is likely a kid’s favorite but delightful at any age. At lunchtime a diverse crowd digs into the restaurant’s voluminous soups, especially yukgaejang kalguksu ($18), with freshly made knife-cut wheat noodles submerged in a spicy broth with shreds of beef pot roast; the bowl is probably big enough to share, but nobody does. Order mandoo with pork and vermicelli ($12) and have them deep fried for a crunchy wrapper. The menu is offal-heavy: a once-a-week blood sausage — more slippery than the French style and filled with noodles, scallions, and soybean paste as well as blood — is offered boiled and sliced, in soups, or with other offal on a giant platter; the assorted soondae ($25) makes the sliced sausage glisten like purplish jewels. In the same vein, dogani tang ($19), described as “boiled ox knee bones,” has gooey bits of cartilage in a simple, calcium-rich soup, while dogani much ($35) tosses the knee joints with crunchy vegetables in a tart, spicy sauce with bonus slices of well-done beef roast on the side. Jokbal ($20 small, $38 large) is a lovely platter of sliced pig feet glazed with soy, ginger, and garlic — more meat on the bones and cartilage than you might expect and a great drinking snack with sake, soju, or a lagerlike Kloud — and the LA galbi ($38) is an excellent, delicate, sweet-and-beefy rendition. Hangover soup ($25) arrives brimming with organ meats (kidney, liver, intestines) in a dried pollack broth with burdock and scratchy ugeoji; as I ate it, it seemed medicinal and also like an admonition to never drink so much again, but I do recommend it for a hangover." - Robert Sietsema
