http://www.yelp.com/biz/cocobang-san-francisco

Tired of cooking and craving to try something different in our neighborhood, we decided to try Cocobang, a Korean restaurant a few blocks away.

Upon entering the restaurant, your eyes are first drawn to this huge white projector screen above the kitchen that is playing music videos. It’s quite dim inside too with a reddish tinge to their lighting. The place is pretty small but seems like it’d be fun for a group of friends to hang out and drink soju cocktails. Service was a bit slow as we had to wait about 10 minutes to get our menus then had to call the server over to take our order. Understandable though since there only seemed to be one server and two cooks in the kitchen and the place was getting packed.

We tried their seafood pancake which has tons of squid and was surprisingly spicy. I think they put the Korean red pepper mixed with the batter. There was no sauce but that was okay actually.

Next we had the rice cakes with ramen. The rice “pinkies” were great, just the right amount of chewiness. I wish there were more veggies in the mix, it was mostly sauce and lots of fish cake.

We think they totally forgot about our chicken since it took another 15 to 20 minutes to come out after we finished the first two dishes. We decided on half fried chicken (no sauce) and half order of the fried chicken with the sweet tangy sauce. It was served with a huge mound of cabbage salad with a dressing of what tasted like Japanese mayo and a bit of red pepper powder. The chicken pieces were huge and meaty with some wings mixed in. The batter for the fried chicken was a bit sweet and the fried batter by itself would have made a great snack! The sweet and tangy sauce was good but I’d almost say it ruined the great tasting crispy skin. Surprisingly we all really loved the salad.

I’d say we’d definitely go back, the rice cakes dish was the best I’ve ever had since KoKo House closed in Berkeley.

Cocobang
550 Taylor Street

http://www.snackanddeli.com/

After reading about it on SFGate, I’ve been wanting to try the kimchi burrito at John’s Snack and Deli and today I got my chance.

I arrived a bit after 11:30am and was one of two customers. By the time 12pm rolled around, there was a line of at least 8 people. I wasn’t sure what to order besides the kimchi burrito but the owner kindly pointed out the specials sign on the outside window. I decided on 2 kimchi burritos (one for Ron and one for myself) and a kalbi soft taco.

We brought it home to eat since there isn’t anywhere to sit inside.

The soft taco had plenty of meat and some great spicy pickled turnips and kimchi on top. It was a bit weird on a corn tortilla though. Still quite tasty.

Next I dug into the burrito which had lots of meat, greens, kimchi, rice, some cheese, and that delicious Korean spicy sauce. It was still a bit weird to be eating a burrito that didn’t taste Mexican but I know I’m going to be craving this again.

The place has specials each day and can be found on their website at the beginning of the week. Today was soft tofu stew day and the wait time was up to 30 minutes (and customers were willing to wait in that little store). This Friday is my favorite Korean dish, rice cakes, aka rice pinkies… may have to go back for more.

Parking there is difficult but it’d be worth the trip by public transportation or if you work around the area. The owner is really friendly and efficient in taking your order and phone orders.

I still have 1/3 of my burrito to enjoy tomorrow… yum, can hardly wait. I also want to go back to try their spicy pork soft taco, spam kim bap (Korean sushi), bim bi bap, and ramen… sometimes I wish I could eat more.

John’s Snack and Deli
40 Battery Street

http://www.yelp.com/biz/s…i-san-francisco

We went over to Tiff’s apartment to pick up her microwave and toaster oven since she’s moving and won’t have enough room for all of her stuff. To take a break from packing, we went out to dinner at Shin Toe Bul Yi on Taraval. We’d been there two or three other times before.

We tried some new dishes this time. Tiff and her roommate told us about their special house pancake. Apparently they used to serve with along with any meal along with their tofu soup but along the way, they stopped. Their “house pancake” is thinner and lighter than their other pancakes. It’s so good, we gobbled up two of them.

We ordered something else called spicy chewy noodle. The noodles are pretty al dente and served with the spicy bean sauce, cabbage, some other veggies, and an egg. It’s a bit weird as a dinner item since it’s cold, I think it’d be better as a lunch dish. (Sorry for the low resolution camera phone photo, I accidentally changed the settings.)

Patsy joined us for dinner too and suggested we try their sea bass dish. It looks like a mess of goo since it has bean sprouts and some green veggies with a spicy sweet sour sauce on top of the fish. We are guessing it’s a Chilean sea bass or something very similar since the fish is very tender and sweet. I’d go back to eat this again.

After dinner, we went back to Tiff’s place to pick up the microwave, toaster oven, some dishes, a foldable table, floor mats, and a huge Tarepanda plush to see if the kitties would want to sleep on it.

We’re sad to see Tiffany moving but we’re going to LA in a few weeks for a wedding so we’ll be able to see each other again soon.