Smokin’ at Chosun

South Koreans love to eat beef, even though it’s terribly expensive. In fact, the high price sometimes makes it more desirable. “That’s why Koreans love barbecue,” explained Keun-Bae Jeon, who owns the two-month-old Chosun Korean BBQ in Overland Park.

Jeon’s joint is all about grilled meats — particularly the beef short ribs that customers cook themselves on gas-burning grills in the center of this restaurant’s tables.

“The price of beef in Korea is the highest in the world,” Jeon said as he watched one of his servers turn up the blue flames on one of the compact grills (each is about the size of a standard cookie sheet) and unroll a thin strip of marinated short rib over the fire. “But people love barbecue, just like they do in Kansas City.”

But unlike Kansas City, which is loaded with barbecue restaurants, South Korea has had to do without American beef for nearly four years. Last month, a processing plant in Arkansas City, Kansas, sent its beef to South Korea in one of the first U.S. shipments since 2003. That was the year Seoul banned beef from the States. Jeon, like most local restaurateurs who serve beef, won’t utter the name of the bovine illness that provoked the ban.

The compact, muscular Jeon has his own reasons for emphasizing the positive when it comes to eating meat. He’s not just a restaurant owner; he’s in the healthy-living business. He originally moved to Manhattan, Kansas, to study engineering but decided to take a few career turns instead. Now he’s attending chiropractic school in addition to running his restaurant.

Jeon and his wife created Chosun Korean BBQ — named for one of the earliest Korean empires — in a narrow space between a tae kwon do studio and a Subway sandwich shop in a strip at 126th Street and Metcalf. They’re about six minutes away from Overland Park’s other two Korean restaurants, Choga Korean Restaurant at 105th and Metcalf and Chung’s Rainbow Restaurant at 103rd and Metcalf.

Theirs is a pretty room but not fancy, and the service is eccentric, to put it kindly. Jeon’s young servers are friendly but not especially attentive, and there’s enough of a language barrier to lead to some unintentionally hilarious misunderstandings.

On the night that I dined with Kym and Stuart, we ordered some iced tea along with a plate of very good pan-fried beef-and-vegetable dumplings. Our server brought each of us a glass tumbler filled with slightly murky water. I asked the young man if this was iced tea, and he nodded. “It’s corn tea. Iced corn tea. Very good.”

“It tastes like dirty water,” Kym whispered. But we bravely sipped the brew, which wasn’t unpleasant. It just wasn’t tea.

When Jeon came into the dining room, I asked about the corn tea and he laughed. “It’s not made with corn. It’s made with wheat. And it’s not actually tea. In Korea, the water can be very stinky and polluted, so we boil it with a little corn or wheat for flavor. This is what we drink instead of water.” By the time he brought us glasses of traditional iced tea, I was kind of into the wheat beverage.

Kym ordered her favorite Korean dish, bibim bap — a bowl of steamed rice mixed with vegetables, beef and fried egg. It’s what she orders most of the time at the Royal China Restaurant on Shawnee Mission Parkway, which offers both Chinese and Korean fare. She liked Chosun’s better, and it’s certainly a hefty version of Korea’s favorite one-bowl dish. Stuart ordered young yang galbi, a steamy beef broth full of short ribs, chestnuts, ginseng and mushrooms. He thought it tasted like good ol’ Midwestern oxtail soup.

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We all shared the yangnyum galbi — one of three dishes actually “barbecued ” on the built-in grills. The menu is conveniently illustrated with stamp-sized photographs of nearly everything on it, but the pictures don’t quite do justice to the two galbi options (somewhat thick-cut, unseasoned short ribs or the less meaty but tasty marinated short ribs) and the saeng sam gyub sal (thin-sliced pork belly). Our strip of marinated meat sizzled on the grill for a while, sending a succulent smoke up to the vent above, and we turned it a time or two. Finally, the server stepped over and used a pair of sewing shears to cut the meat into little squares.

Traditionally, Koreans wrap this delicacy in a cool lettuce leaf and pile on spoonfuls of savory items before devouring it. The little side dishes — what Americans might view as condiments — aren’t all visually enticing, but in many ways they’re the best part of the meal. At Chosun, they include Korea’s most popular condiment, fiery kimchee (fermented cabbage), as well as an equally spicy version made with cabbage and dried squid. The latter was so hot, it brought tears to my eyes. There’s also a salad of matchstick potatoes and carrots in a light, creamy sauce; delicate little vegetable pancakes; and a cool bean-sprout salad.

The novelty of grilling our own meat faded quickly. But we enjoyed sampling various combinations of beef with different condiments, including thin cubes of jiggly rice cakes smothered with a mahogany curry sauce.

Kym announced that she would come back again, even though it made for quite a trek from her home in the old Northeast neighborhood.

Unless you already live in south Johnson County, driving to Chosun Korean BBQ can feel like traveling to Seoul, especially during early evening traffic. But this restaurant is appealing enough to brave even the slowest snarls on Interstate 435. On the night I brought Bob and Patrick, the dining room was packed, mostly with native Korean diners. That night’s host, a skinny blond named Zach, escorted us to a table without a grill and handed us heavy bound menus.

“All of the grill tables are taken,” he said with a slight sniff.

“Doesn’t that defeat the reason for us to come out for Korean barbecue?” Patrick asked. We decided to share an appetizer and wait for one of the grill tables.

One of my friends, recently returned from a trip to South Korea, had told me that appetizers are more like small meals in Seoul — and we probably should have thought twice about indulging in the pizza-sized haemool pajeon, a thick pancake made with scallions, squid, mussels and shrimp. That night’s server cut the pancake with scissors. “Couldn’t you use a pizza cutter?” Patrick asked. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Too thick.”

And nearly too filling for a first course. But we were all game for dinner by the time a grill table opened up. Waiting for our meals, we nibbled on a chopped cabbage salad drenched in a punchy wasabi dressing. “Cool food with a hot taste,” Patrick said.

Patrick had opted for the cook-his-own-short-ribs experience. Bob and I settled for ready-to-eat meals, including traditional bulgogi — marinated, grilled ribeye, exquisitely seasoned, and a chicken version served in a silky, buttery sauce.

“Most Korean barbecues don’t serve chicken,” Jeon told us later, “but Midwesterners do, so we had to offer it here.”

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The meals arrived with ball-shaped metal bowls of sticky rice and all of those unusual little condiments. “It’s a very tactile culinary experience,” Patrick said as he folded a lettuce leaf around a piece of hot meat and a spoonful of pungent kimchee. “You get to eat and play with your food.”

Even better, the check wasn’t terribly high. Most dinners are priced at less than $20, making this a perfectly reasonable night out for Kansas Citians — and a bargain by Korean standards.