With the weather warming up, Korean restaurants in Palisades Park’s Koreatown are

With the weather warming up, Korean restaurants in Palisades Park’s Koreatown are serving up Naengmyun, with some of them selling it exclusively. The dish, consisting of cold noodles traditionally prepared with beef, beef broth, and vegetables, is found in many different varieties.

The most popular varieties are Mool-Naengmyun, cold noodles in chilled broth, Bibim-Naengmyun, spicy cold noodles, and Hwe-Naengmyun, spicy sashimi noodles.

You Chon Korean Restaurant, which specializes in cold noodles, has maintained its place as the #1 Naengmyun restaurant in Palisades Park since it opened 10 years ago. The restaurant’s popularity comes from their secret recipe, which mixes more than 14 spices and sauces with beef bone broth.

“On average, 300 dishes are sold on weekdays. Sometimes the number goes up to 600. We have other menus for people who don’t like the cold noodles, such as Gamjatang (pork bone soup) and Dolsot Bibimbab (stone bowl bibimbab),” Sangok Lee, a manager at the You Chon Korean Restaurant, said.

The restaurant offers menus that go well with Naengmyun, including green bean pancake (bindaedduk), meat and kimchi dumpling, and beef ribs (Galbi Jjim).

All Day Dining (Korean name: Samsisettae) has been promoting Hamheung Naengmyun as its main menu even though it used to specialize in fermented soybean paste soup, Chunggukjang. [Hamheung Naengmyun is a style of cold noodles from Hamheung province in North Korea.] A newly-hired chef from Hamheung province makes noodles with sweet potato starch by himself.

Customer response to the menu is good. The owner of the restaurant, Betty Park, said that they sold hundreds of dishes every day and the sales will more than double in the summer.

Kun Jip brought the original flavor of Naengmyun from Korea through a partnership with Korean Naengmyun franchise Yoochun (not related to You Chon). Last year, the president of Yoochun, Hwaja Woo, visited the U.S. to hand down the company’s secret method of Naengmyun to Kun Jip.

The broth of Kun Jip’s Naengmyun is simmered with 13 ingredients such as beef, seaweed, and radish and the noodles are made from buckwheat and kudzu. Sales of Naengmyun at Kun Jip are also rising as the weather becomes hotter and hotter.

Gam Mee Ok has recently changed its name to Choi Ga Neangmyun to be a specialty in cold noodles.

A number of Neangmyun restaurants are opening in Palisades Park, but their owners are unconcerned about the heavy competition.

“I am not worried because I understand that the restaurants think they should offer cold menus during the summer season,” Lee, the manager at You Chon Korean Restaurant, said.

Betty Park also mentioned that a cheaper price is not a significant matter because customers eventually choose a restaurant based on only the quality of its food.

By Donggrami Kim and Yoonmi Baek Via Korea Daily
Translated by Jiwon Choi from Korean