Along the way we stop by a couple places including Woorijip, a fast food convenience store for Korean food. I stepped inside to check it out and was delighted to find what was within.
Woorijip is basically formated as a open grocery store where you can by pre-made Korean staples. Including:
Cheap, fast, all you can stuff down Korean bibimbap, kimchi, bulgogi, korean goodies everywhere! No wonder Woorijip was the winner in Midtownlunch.com‘s Best Cheap Korean.
A few doors down was a dumpling place that had been on several books and lists, however I found it to be disappointing!..gah.
The dumplings are color coded: these are seafood dumplings.
The flavors range from kimchi to pork to vegetables. I was disappointed to find that I couldn’t get a small mix of all three to go, and so had to settle with just the pork dumplings.
Yellow pickled radish from Mandoo Bar
The pork dumplings, compared to Prosperity Dumpling‘s were abysmal. The skin was too thick for my liking and the pork meat was a bit bland. To top it off the dumplings cost about $6.00 for 5. I could have had better dumplings for a fifth of that cost in Chinatown…
The last time we were in Koreatown, we ate at BCD Tofu House which had ten times more amazing mandoo (dumplings).
Sad to say it but Mandoo bar was not to par.
Korean dumplings are different from Chinese dumplings- they are obviously not going to be the same as Chinese dumplings. These are some of the best, fresh, well-cooked Korean dumplings I've had here in nyc, so I find it sad and disappointing that you expect them to be like Chinese dumplings (I have two professional chef-parents, one Chinese, and one Korean. I also love Prosperity's (Chinese) dumplings, but do not expect them to be comparable against each other.)
The orange colored ones are Kimchi dumplings.