Entering this dive was already an experience in itself, because it smelled like nothing one could imagine. Hankook Taqueria is a Korean taco shop and they dish out some products worth taking a road trip for.
We started off the meal with a monstrous tower of nachos, topped with jack cheese, lettuce, onions, cabbage, cilantro, jalapenos, lime, and bul-gogi (a marinated Korean ribeye.) This was all topped with ketchup. The ingredients mayseem odd but they blend well together. The ketchup actually added a nice touch, although at first I was suspicious. The nachos were delicious and made for a great appetizer.
Next came the Pa-Jeon, a vegetable pancake with spicy soy sauce. Though normally this is not my favorite dish at Korean restaurants, Hankook Taqueria made a light and tasty version. It was a nice complement to the rest of the meal, but nothing worth making a trip downtown for.
Then arrived the Ko-Kuma, the tempura fried sweet potatoes. This was a play on French fries/potato chips, and it was hard to put down. They were served with ketchup. This was a clever way for Hankook to take a traditional American dish (not Mexican like a taqueria would suggest) and put a Korean spin on it.
The firedog was next to reach our table and it was gone in ten seconds. A firedog is a beef hotdog in a bun topped with spicy cabbage kimchee. This was the most inventive of the dishes we ate, and worth going out of your way to try.
There are five types of tacos: chicken, beef, pork, fish, and tofu. We tried four of them, and will be back for the fifth. The beef taco was disappointing. The marinade of the beef itself was overly sweet and overpowered the taco. The chicken and fish tacos were the two best. Each tasted so different from the other, and those two really exemplified the Korean influence on the tacos. The pork taco was delicious as well, but it did not leave as much of a mark in my mind as the fish and chicken.
To finish off the meal, we ordered two burritos to share. The chicken burrito was hands down the best dish of the day. It consisted of marinated grilled chicken and kimchee fried rice, served with the garnishes on the tacos, all wrapped in a rice tortilla. The fish burrito was good, but their inventive tartar sauce was a little overpowering.
What to get:
1. Chicken Burrito
2. Fish and chicken Tacos
3. Fire Dog
4. Gogi-Nachos
5. Ko-Kuma
For next time: We saw on the menu the Daeji Gogi Slides, spicy pork sliders with cucumber kimchee served on Krystal style buns. They looked and smelled superb.
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