Just two hours from Charlottesville, you can experience not just a taste, but a whole heaping platter of Korean culture. Annandale, Va. is home to a small-scale Koreatown, complete with Korean restaurants, bakeries, dry cleaners and tuxedo shops that line the streets, one after another.
Nestled at the corner of John Marr Drive and Little River Turnpike/Route 236 — the heart of this Korean community — sits a Korean-style Chinese restaurant named Choong Hwa Woon that is well worth the drive — despite the limited parking you will encounter upon arrival.
Inside, the bright, spacious single room of Choong Hwa Woon bore a striking resemblance to a hospital cafeteria. Just audible over customers’ chatter, servers called out “Ahn yung ha se yo!’ – Korean for “hello, how are you” – as I walked by. I sat down at an eight-person table in the center aisle, which various customers share when the tables along the sides of the restaurant are all occupied. As I waited for the waitress, I was quickly offered a cup of warm barley tea by a busperson. If barley tea is not your cup of tea, you can help yourself to a free cup of fresh coffee at the door.
Selecting dishes is more challenging than choosing between tea or coffee: Specials are printed in Korean on signs along the walls, but when I asked a server what they meant, she replied simply that I wouldn’t like them since I’m not Korean. She offered no more explanation, and it seemed fruitless to ask any further questions. Though half in Korean, the menu proved more helpful; printed on a plain, one-sided sheet of paper, it offered brief descriptions of dishes in English.
After the waitress took my order, a waiter set down four side dishes, or banchan: one of kimchi (seasoned, fermented cabbage), one of sliced raw onion and pickled daikon radish, one of black bean sauce, and one of soy sauce with thinly sliced jalapenos. Despite its chili flakes and alarmingly red appearance, the kimchi was relatively mild in spiciness. Its napa leaves instead burst with a bold garlicky flavor that momentarily numbed my senses. The sliced pickled daikon radish, or danmuji, complemented the kimchi with its sweet taste and crisp bite, similar to that of a pickle.
Next came a plate of crescent-shaped fried dumplings ($4.99), still sizzling on a paper doily. Each dumpling bulged with a pork and green onion-based filling, enveloped in a dumpling wrapper and fried to a light golden-brown color. When paired with the jalapeno-soy sauce, each bite fused the sauce’s pleasantly mildly spicy kick with the rich, meaty flavor of the dumpling, ending in a satisfying crunch.
Then, as Choong Hwa Woon prides itself as a “Korean-style Chinese restaurant,” I thought it was fitting to order a Chinese classic — the beef lo mein ($8.99), which was served with rice and a bowl of miso soup. The noodles, cooked a little past al dente, were sautéed with a colorful mélange of vegetables — including young broccoli, red pepper and onion — and tender slices of beef. This Korean flavor-infused dish had a bit of sweetness not found in its saltier Chinese counterpart. Together, the tantalizing blend of flavors led me, for once, to eat all of my veggies.
The last of the three dishes to arrive was the Hae Mul Pa Jun ($14.99) — “assorted seafood pancake,” as its description read — which had been heartily recommended by the waitress. About nine inches in diameter and sliced into eight pieces like a pizza, this pancake looked vaguely reminiscent of the Chinese scallion pancake. The taste, however, was not. The description was slightly misleading – “assorted seafood” turned out to mean squid and tiny bits of shrimp. Each bite, however, seemed to bring only mouthfuls of jalapenos and strips of green onion loosely wrapped in greasy dough. The result was a spicy, yet dull-sweet oily chunk that falls apart both in your hand and in your mouth.
Though the seafood pancake was somewhat of a disappointment, the delicious beef lo mein and fried dumplings more than made up for it. The generous portions were a bit overwhelming, but well worth their prices. All in all, Choong Hwa Woon has definitely won my heart.
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