KumGangSang Korean Restaurant and Musicovery

KumGangSang
49 West 32nd Street (near 5th Ave, close to Washington Mutual and Radisson Hotel)
New York, NY 10001
(212) 967-0909

Party of 3 for Korean BBQ. We ordered beef, pork, and ox tongue. Beef was standard but the pork was pretty surprising. I've always been a beef BBQ fan. Pork took too long cook usually and it was almost never tender enough for me. The pork here was amazingly good, though. Ox tongue was thin and slightly crunchy, I liked the texture. I wouldn't recommend it by itself as a meal, though. There's not enough meat to fill a hungry customer. Since the three of us shared our foods, it was ok to have ox tongue. The sidedishes were good, not as spicy as I'd like. I think this restaurant tends to have milder food, which is ok. The best sidedish is of course kimchi, but the radish and apple salad (mixed with another veggie that I'd failed to identity) are good, too. I was hoping to get cucumber but it was not included in our sidedishes. Oh well.

My friend Songji had introduced the lettuce leaf wrap this past summer. Since I was taught by her to wrap up beef, kimchi, and sauce, and then eat the whole thing in one golp (no exceptions), I also gave strict orders to do the same to my two friends who have never eaten Korean BBQ before. Of course, they both stuffed their lettuce leaf a bit too much and ended up somewhat embarassed about the mouthful of food. I can't eat the BBQed meat without the lettuce leaf actually. Something about the crisp, refreshing, and slightly sweet aftertaste that's just awesome. Besides, most marinated meats are too salty or greasy on their own, I think. We actually had to get a second basket of lettuce leaves since we ran out too quickly. Come to think of it, the lettuce leaves were the only raw foods I ate in Shanghai last summer. I did not get sick surprisingly enough. I guess they must have cleaned those pretty well.

There's a branch at Flushing that I have not gone yet. I had forgotten to review this other Flushing Korean BBQ place I've been to last winter. I thought the other place was better, and it came with steamed eggs and kimchi soup. But hey, Korean BBQs are tasty. I'm not complaining at all.

Musicovery.com
For Pandora lovers, this is even better. Genre of music are colorcoded and you can jump from one song to another like connecting the dots game. You can also limit songs by decade and pick a mood (dark, positive, energetic, calm). For some reason, I tend to gravitate toward the dark much more. They even have classical music! And of course dark classical music tends to be from the Romantic era, just figures. I love my Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann though. This place is so addictive, almost more so than Ruckus. Ruckus lets you stream whole albums online and I've been finding a lot of good CDs this way, like B.B. King and Clapton's album, as well as Train, Fall Out Boy, Black Eyed Peas, and PCD. Surprisingly, Regina Spektor is on there as well. The biggest surprise is probably Freezepop, this group that did a song for Guitar Hero I and Guitar Hero II. Also has classical music and many world instrumentals. I think I have too many albums for my own good. When I can't decide what album to listen to, Musicovery is a better bet. It'll select mood music for me and I can figure out what genre to listen to. I usually like to listen to all genres but you have to admit sometimes different genres just don't mesh very well. Today I've been enjoying Funk and Rock of the 70s and 80s. I hope you'll find your music pleasing while exploring Musicovery as well!