Korean in San Antonio

We are a small restaurant on the West-side of San Antonio. Chong (President and Head Chef) loves to cook for people so that they can enjoy her food. The rising sun over the blue Korean mountains is smiling with joy of cooking. Our restaurant has been a dream of Chong's for many years and the dream has come true! God has blessed us!; ;We are simple people. Our restaurant is simple, our designs are simple, and our food is simply good, old-fashioned, Korean food (with a couple of Chong's special non-Korean dishes... done her way!). Come and taste Chong's food and find the complexity in our simplicity.;;"West Side is the Best Side for Korean Food!"

Go Hyang Jib, more familiarly known as Korean B-B-Q House, has recently moved across the street to new quarters - not necessarily news in itself, but the Casey family has taken the occasion to ratchet the operation up a notch. Make that two or three notches. Not only is the new place three times as large as the old, but the furniture all matches, there is now a prominent sushi bar, and dim, atmospheric lighting. ;The old location was almost painfully bright in comparison, but at least you felt it was sincere. Dim lighting, on the other hand, has an air of pretentiousness about it that seemed inappropriate. Once my eyes (and my attitude) adjusted, it was clear that fundamentally, nothing had changed. Young, Tom, Kevin, and crew were as friendly and helpful as ever, the reorganized menu didn't seem to have taken on expensive airs (though you might have to have a fair amount of terminology explained to you). And the sushi bar - well, there was a surprise. - Ron Bechtol

Starters such as the “pancake” filled with squid and oyster are an easy introduction to the kitchen’s authentic style, but don’t skip the Korean barbecue and the treasure-like array of panch’an.

Korean and Chinese food come together under one roof.

Wang's Garden, which presents an “authentic Chinese” face to the world, is nevertheless a kind of paradox. The menu is printed in Chinese, English, and Korean (the take-out version even omits the Chinese), and many dishes seem to suggest a subtle influence of Korean cuisine. You can (and should), for example, ask for kim chee, the Korean pickled cabbage specialty, to add into your otherwise Chinese-sounding noodles with chop suey and soup. As it turns out, the restaurant has ties, either real or in spirit, to similar establishments in China that cater to a Korean clientele. You can tell which dishes are especially favored there by checking out the Korean script on the right hand side of each page: Where there's a blank, the dish doesn't make the Korean cut. The decor at Wang's Garden gets its own chile accent in the form of red columns that play against walls. Scrolls, a few screens, and a lot of plastic plants and posies constitute the rest of the decor — not exactly the expected framework for a cuisine that turns out to be both lusty and sophisticated. But that's paradox for you — and paradox is, after all, one of the philosophical tenets of Chinese food.;- Ron Bechtol