Gettin’ Down in Chinatown with Suishaya

By: Emily Jones and Heidi Lee

Setting, a Korean-Japanese restaurant nestled in the heart of Chinatown. Suishaya Restaurant at 2 Tyler Street right off of Beach, the same street that leads to the arch.

Agnes Ly
Photo by Agnes Ly

Upon walking into the cozy nook from the mist outside we, Heidi Lee and Emily Jones the amateur food critics, were immediately ushered to a corner table where we would cause the least damage to the harmony of the other guests. Ordering: Ok dol bibimbap with beef and Ok dol bibimbap with tofu 28.78 + 5.80 tip = 34.58 for two entrees, without drinks.

After ordering two classic bibimbap beef and the vegetarian version with tofu, the server promptly brought out four small dishes of Korean appetizers: kimchi, fermented mung bean sprouts, zucchini, and cucumber in a salty sauce. Apart from a slight disaster that involved unintentional flinging of zucchini with chopsticks, and Lee reporting in disgust she still disliked the spiciness of kim chi the first part of the meal was uneventful.

When the bibimbap arrived in all its glory, sizzling rice and sweet chili sauce to mix in was when the searing truth came out. Lee was much more experienced with Korean cuisine than she let on. Rapidly stirring in the yolk, veggies, bean sprouts, and ‘bracken fiddlehead fern stems’ or gosari we originally mistaken as sea vegetables and packing her rice to the outer edges of the hot clay pot so it would become crunchy.

Jones was far less successful. The tofu broke to pieces and instead of stirring quickly with the spoon that was provided she used chopsticks which are not the best tool for packing. Since it was the vegetarian dish there was a lack of flavor making it necessary to add soy sauce. Adding more moisture may have contributed to the lack of crisped rice.

Lee, 20, student at School of Management at Boston University observed the Boston Chinatown was really more of an Asian-townbecause so many of the businesses are ambiguous Asian dining and in larger cities like San Francisco and New York City there is a more defined ‘Chinese-osity’.

Looking at other reviews of this restaurant online, it seems they are well known for their sushi and not considered masters with the Korean dishes. Korean restaurants seem to be concentrated in the Alston area and not downtown as this one was. It was not horrible, but not good enough to tempt me back. Spending $12.50 for a glorified stir-fry made me a little sad. But the experience, so worth spending a half-hour enveloped in steam from the hot dish on a cold and damp night in Boston.

Vocabulary Lesson:

ggoh-choo-jahng (red hot pepper paste) Gochujang sauce (sometimes spelled Kochujang). This sauce is both sweet and intended to be spicy, but it reminded me of ketchup.

dolsot bibimbap refers to the pot that rice is cooked in

nurungi – the almost-burnt rice is so wonderful vendors sell it as a snack in Korean grocery stores

For more information see these sites:

http://dolsotbibimbap.com/tag/gosari/

http://www.yelp.com/biz/suishaya-boston

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_cuisine

About Emily Jones

Emily Jones (COM '11) is a food writer for the Quad.

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