Gebang Sikdang
Restaurant · Koreatown ·
Michelin-recognized Korean restaurant serving premium soy-marinated crab
Michelin-recognized Korean restaurant serving premium soy-marinated crab
"After a short-lived pop-up earlier this year, Seoul’s crab-focused chain now has a permanent residence in a Koreatown strip mall. Casual setting aside, it’s an upscale Korean spot with fancified seafood dishes, but the food and ambiance don’t quite live up to the promise. Gebang’s small dining room is spare, quiet, and lit like a dental office, with couples hunched over tables that are sectioned off by slim dividers, as if they’re meant for taking the SATs. Those dividers don’t do much to block out noise, so know that you’ll probably overhear the people next to you gossiping about whether their situationship cheated or just “emotionally checked out.” And while the setup is meant to offer an illusion of privacy, you’ll still be close enough to bump elbows with strangers. photo credit: Cathy Park You’ll notice the same thing on nearly every table: the $48 raw marinated crab set that’s listed is at the very top of the menu like a Coachella headliner. It comes with sweet, slippery crab meat that slides cleanly out of the shell and a banchan spread that includes kimchi pancakes with crispy edges and refreshingly tart dongchimi. We like the crab, but the fist-sized portion is better suited for a snack than a full meal. The other sets on the menu come with larger dishes, like abalone bibimbap and crab roe noodles that look like they were assembled with tweezers. But they taste underwhelming—the abalone doesn’t mix well into the rice, and the crab roe gets buried under the noodles and granita. Gebang works best if you just need a break from the more casual, plastic-water-jug spots in K-town or have money to burn in your pockets. But if you want to fill up on raw marinated crab, we’d steer you toward the larger portions at Crab House and Soban instead. Food Rundown Soy-Marinated Crab Set The portion is tiny to the point where you might assume the kitchen forgot a few pieces. But what’s there is good. The crab is rich and full of that sticky soy flavor. Just know that this is more of a teaser trailer than a full movie, and after spending $48 on this, you’ll probably leave hungry. photo credit: Cathy Park Soy-Marinated Abalone Bibimbap Set The rice comes topped with a respectable amount of abalone, plus a side of briny abalone liver sauce to mix in as you please. The abalone chunks are huge, which means some bites are just abalone, while others are rice and nori. It’s fine, but the flavors don’t fully come together, and it’s not something we’d come back for. photo credit: Cathy Park Crab Roe Noodles A gorgeous, chilled seafood parfait with a base of soba noodles layered with soy granita and raw crab. Once you mix it up, the crab kind of disappears into the background, so it’s more fun to look at than to eat. photo credit: Cathy Park" - Cathy Park
"A Seoul-based ganjang gejang (soy-marinated crab) specialist that earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand earlier this year is opening a permanent location in the former Hibi, which closed on March 2, in Koreatown, after an initially planned limited-run pop-up was so successful the team decided to stay. The Los Angeles outpost will be operated in partnership with Kaizen Dining Group, the hospitality group that founded Hibi, and benefits from Kaizen’s import-export arm; Solomon Lee, the chef and co-founder of Hibi, says the delay bringing the concept stateside came down to “a matter of sourcing the same crab that Gebang uses in Korea and finding a way to bring that over to LA without compromising quality.” Known in Seoul for serving some of the best raw-marinated crab in South Korea, the restaurant will—like the original—serve exclusively female blue crabs rather than mixing male and female crabs, ensuring that “each piece is full of flavorful crab roe.” The pop-up has served a set meal with a choice of either soy sauce or spicy marinated crab, and each set comes with rice, miyeok guk (seaweed soup), dongchimi, and banchan; for customers who don’t want to deal with shells there’s a crab roe bibimbap served with both marinades. Lee says he “always knew that [the current Hibi location] was just too small for [Hibi],” and that he was “thinking of a lot of different things that we can do for that space.” On the original plan he explains, “Originally, we were just going to see how the pop-up does, go back to doing Hibi for a month or two, and if the pop-up was [a success], then we would’ve made plans to go ahead to change Hibi into Gebang,” and because the Gebang owner had expansion plans and Kaizen already had crab in transit, Lee adds that “It would’ve been a waste just to have it be used for a three-week pop-up.” Early demand was strong—the pop-up sold out of crab midway through the dinner shift on its third day open. After the pop-up ends on March 23 the spot will close for a few days to repaint and lightly touch up the interior, then reopen with an expanded menu that more closely mirrors the Seoul location plus an LA-exclusive dish likely to be a spicy marinated and charcoal-grilled crab. The opening is part of a recent wave of South Korean restaurants establishing LA locations, including DamSot, Jjampong Zizon, and the forthcoming Hojokban." - Fiona Chandra
"A Michelin-recognized South Korean restaurant will be mounting a pop-up at the Koreatown site (temporarily closed) from March 4 through March 23; the March residency is centered on Korean heritage and operates 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m." - Mona Holmes
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