Sam P.
Yelp
When I first came to KC back in 2007, there were bascially three sitdowna Korean restaurants. Chosun on 127th and Metcalf, Sobahn (closed) and Choga on 105th.
It was a sad scene, being from Toronto Canada, where there are more Korean restaurants on a single city block than in all of KC (even to this day) where my mother lived.
Being of Korean heritage and have worked in Seoul for three years in my twenties, I am very aware of Korean food, The Korean scene has grown in KC to include more trendy foods like double fried chicken, korean style hot dogs and other street foods, but Choga and Chosun remain as the standard sit down Korean fare.
When I'm with my Asian friends, they avoid this restaurant like the plague, much preferring the taste of Chosun, since we would mainly eat table BBQ 99% of the time, but as a lover of more traditional meals like stews, soups and rice dishes, I tried Choga because I find Chosun's non-BBQ to be fairly average.
I got a stew called Gamja-Tang. Gamja means potato in Korean but it is not the star of the show (vegetables in stews rarely are for Koreans). The star of the show is the pork and in this instance, they use the neck bone pork. This is a hearty dish and often comes in oversized bowls that looks like there is a ton of meat, but then you realize much of it is bone.
With a beer, tax and generous tip, I paid $30. The entree itself was $18.
The gamja-tang here was great, it was spicy and had good flavor. The meat fell off the bones easily and the amount of vegetables were good. The problem was the portion. The bowl was small and the potato took a third of it, the amount of pork for the price was low. The sides dishes (called banchan) were pretty good though. For a Korean, it doesn't matter how nice the atmosphere is, unless you're a bougie place, we care about PORTION SIZE!
The other thing was bothered me was the temperature in the restaurant with the owners either keeping the AC off or it was not working. It was during the heat dome weather and the temperature inside (I took a reading) was about 84 degrees. It reminded me of eating in small streetside stalls in Seoul during the hot summer nights when I worked in Korea.
I would recommend Choga for their non-bbq (I haven't eaten their BBQ yet) but for me, the food to price ratio was not great, but again, if there are only 2-3 traditional Korean restaurants in KC, you can basically charge what you want.