Please be seated. May I take your drink orders? Thank you. Now let me light your table on fire.
This is the typical start to a meal at Wudon, a recently opened Korean barbecue restaurant in Creve Coeur. The space has held a Korean restaurant on and off for more than 20 years, including Hangook Kwan, Korea House, and Corea House. All of these mean basically the same thing, although Corea House had the nicest sign.
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Wudon has an even nicer sign, and more important, the nicest interior of all of them, its walls now lined with cartoonish art and kitschy signs. The thing on the table that the server lights is a hubcap-like propane-fired metal grill built into the table as—literally and figuratively—the centerpiece of your meal.
Barbecue may be ordered as individual items (with various cuts of beef or pork) or in small (for two to three people) or large (for four to six) combination plates, which include multiple cuts of meat, soups, a seafood pancake, a steamed egg pot, and bottomless bowls of panchan, a varying range of sweet, savory, and spicy tidbits.
The grill heats quickly, just enough time for what looks like a generous charcuterie platter to land on your table. But these artfully arranged hunks, slices, and, in some cases, full cuts are raw, ornamented in the center of the circular plate by a smattering of sweet squash, mushrooms, and onion.
The rest is up to you. The meat hisses when tossed on the grill and cooks quickly. Our meal was a beef and pork combo for four: a whole rectangular portion of rib steak, about a dozen boneless beef ribs, a mound of 2-inch pieces of pork jowl, and four thick slices of pork belly. Some we ate straight from the grill; others we wrapped with marinated onions in leaf lettuce. We also dipped the meat into one of two provided sauces: sesame oil and bean paste.
Although grilled meat is clearly the star of the menu, there’s also a page of dinner-portion soups, another of hot pots, and yet another of “main dishes” ranging from the familiar (bulgogi) to the more exotic (jokbal, pigs’ feet). The nakji-bokkeum (octopus stir-fry) consists of small octopus tentacles served on cast iron with a spicy sauce of chili paste and jalapeño.
Meals are accompanied by rice, a surprisingly effective extinguisher for the chili paste. Several beers are offered, as well as soju (a Korean rice-based liquor that’s like weaker vodka) and a relative newcomer to the local market, makgeolli, whose closest analog is probably nigori (cloudy) sake, although this stuff is only 6 percent alcohol or so.
We had multiple servers for the same table, and the room wasn’t ventilated well enough for tabletop grills, leading to an occasionally overcast ceiling. But the overall experience is quite immersive, especially with all the audience participation.
