It’s a little past 7 on a Friday night, and every jemi-gyopo in St. Louis under the age of 25 seems to be at Wudon, the Korean barbecue restaurant in Creve Coeur. There’s a wait for the tables, fitted with their own grills that glow and smolder. Overhead ventilation snatches the rising smoke, though the ambient scents of sizzling soy sauce, beef, seared onions, and garlic linger.
The staccato techno-chirp of K-pop blasts from a wall-size TV. Conversations spill out in a stew of largely unaccented English and in the standard dialect of Seoul, with lower-paced rhythms of Chungcheong dialects adding their flavors. Many of the patrons are college students from the trendsetting New South Korea. They’re gyopos—Koreans living, at least temporarily, abroad. (Specifically, since they’re living in the U.S., they’re jemi-gyopos.) They’re here, on the other side of the planet, and they’re ready for a taste of home on a Friday night. Not surprising is the repetition of “Heol!,” the young Korean equivalent of “like,” as in “I’m like, so hungry.”
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There’s a veritable landscape of grilled meat. Undulating patchwork prairies of raw ribeye slices are spread across platters that regularly emerge from the kitchen. Brisket is sliced into little scrolls that roll across the serving plates like a freshly plowed field of pink and white. Curves of short ribs are cut Korean-style, the bones sawed like stubby fence pickets packed with generous chunks of beef.
It’s odd that there aren’t more Korean restaurants in the Midwest. Protein-rich fare seared on a grill is hardly unfamiliar fare to Missourians. In such places as Hawaii, “Korean BBQ” joints dot almost every strip mall. Except for “fusion” presentations, however, Korean food is somewhat rare in St. Louis. Wudon opened a few years ago (the late Joe Bonwich reviewed it for SLM, here), and it immediately became a second home to Korean expatriates, especially the college crowd.
A touch of authenticity: the windows at Wudon are screened over, as if the place is being renovated. In fact, Korean restaurants are culturally viewed as refuges from daily life, cozy sequestered spaces. Window covers add to this atmosphere.
The big seller here is the all-you-can-eat option, with platters of prepared cow that keep coming. Panchan (pictured above) serve a critical role. Pickled or marinated, the acids cut the overwhelming fatty richness of the grilled proteins. The grill’s circled with spirals of panchan bowls, the sides—pickled radishes, boiled spinach bright with sesame seed oil, marinated bean sprouts, fried fish cakes, kimchi smeared with dark chile pepper paste—essential to a full Korean meal. Pancakes of griddled batter and chopped green onions. Gamja saelleodeu is the ubiquitous, creamy potato salad that tastes less Far East and more classic Midwest. Plates sporting small topiaries of lettuce leaves arrive; the leaves are used like emerald tortillas to wrap the grilled meat and other ingredients into burrito-like rolls. Then there are mandu, the Korean take on pot stickers, which might make a nice digestif.
The all-you-can eat plan isn’t the only option, though. Dolsot are super-heated stone bowls of rice heaped with grilled meat and cooked vegetables, the rice on bottom roasted to a crackly crust. Noodles, tofu cubes, and greens float in broths with a color-coded warning, the violent crimson a sign of the chile-laced fire swirling in every spoonful. Specialties include stir fried squid (pictured above) and pork belly stew, jokbal with braised pig trotters, beef tripe hot pot. Kalbi ribs, with their buttons of bone, sizzle and sputter, the marbling caramelizing into a crust as sweet as any Texas BBQ. Pork belly and jowls glisten, their fattiness so extravagant that it’s not necessary to wrap them in lettuce like the beef; instead, they’re eaten with slices of pickled giant radish piquant enough to cut the richness.
As the evening goes on, the conversations grow more animated, lubricated by generous portions of Hite beer and soju. (The former is a light lager, often described as the Korean brother of Budweiser. The latter—think of it as a kind of vodka, though lower in alcohol—pairs well with much Korean fare.) A massive screen plays “Goodbye,” the hit song from K-pop group 2NE1.
“Even though I cannot stay forever with you,” the band extorts, “it’s OK for just a while.”
Seems like a good plan for an evening at Wudon. Heol, yeah!
