Restaurant Review #230: Oaks Korean BBQ, Simi Valley - CLOSED

Chicken and beef on the grill

Update: This restaurant has closed.

Oaks Korean BBQ in Simi Valley, whose sign actually says "Oaks Oaks Korean BBQ," is the only Korean restaurant in the area--the next closest are in Canoga Park. The restaurant is attached to a sushi bar, which seems like it may have been a separate restaurant at one time.

It's possible to order sushi from your table, so you don't have to choose between Korean food and sushi, making this restaurant a great option for a group with diverse tastes. The sushi, however, is of the spicy mayo school of sushi preparation, so if that's not your thing, be warned. I tried a spicy yellowtail roll and while the portion was generous and the fish was fine, I couldn't force myself to eat more than two bites because the rice was too soft and not vinegary enough and the mayo was overpowering.


Beef bulgogi, uncooked

The main attraction at Oaks is the barbecue, of course. The restaurant offers the option of cooking the marinated meat at your table over a gas grill or having it cooked for you in the kitchen. Personally, I prefer the latter, as it leaves the cooking to the experts and makes the dining experience more relaxing.

I always stick with bulgogi, as I'm not too adventurous when it comes to eating meat. You have a choice of spiciness when it comes to the meat marinade, but this being Simi Valley, there doesn't seem to be any difference between medium and hot--neither is spicy enough. It's still a decent marinade, and the pork and beef are particularly flavorful here.


Bean sprout banchan

The barbecue dishes come with an assortment of banchan, which are side dishes like bean sprouts, broccoli with sesame seeds, "spicy" cucumbers, and kim chi. The banchan are not very spicy--I even asked if they had spicier ones, hoping maybe they had a second batch only for Korean diners and others who requested them, but no such luck. You can ask for a side of chili sauce, but it's not quite the same. (I enjoy that fiery sensation on my lips and the sweat on my brow, trying to douse the flames in my mouth by chugging beer and shoveling in rice and meat.) Also, the banchan selection is not as extensive or as exotic as you'd find at a K-town restaurant. Steamed white rice, fresh lettuce leaves, and miso paste also come with the meat. The lettuce and miso are for making wraps with the grilled meat.


Marinated turnip (?) banchan

In addition to sushi and Korean barbecue, there are Korean soups, teriyaki beef/chicken/salmon, tempura, raw beef, octopus, tofu and yellowtail collar. There's also a savory, fried scallion pancake that comes with tempura dipping sauce. I highly recommend ordering this as an appetizer. An extensive selection of ice cream beckons for dessert: fried ice cream, mochi, and plum, mango, green tea, strawberry or chocolate ice cream. There's also a small selection of beer and wine.

Cucumber banchan

The food isn't cheap, with each plate of meat costing around $17, but you do get a lot of food for the price considering that miso soup, rice, and all the sides are included in the price. The restaurant is quiet and the booths offer privacy. Since the grills are gas, you won't reek of barbecue when you leave, and there is no noisy vent fan to yell over. The restaurant is also very clean.

Kim chi

The restaurant isn't easy to spot from the street or even after you've pulled into the parking lot. It's at the corner of LA and Sequoia, in the back corner of a strip mall with a 7/11, next to the comic book store. The service is excellent--friendly, prompt, and well-informed. It does seem that the age of the server corresponds directly with English-speaking ability, with the grandmotherly woman who might greet you at the door not seeming to speak any English and the young man who served us last time obviously being a native speaker.

Dining room

Though dining here does make me crave K-Town restaurants like Soot Bull Jeep, whose food is notably better, the less intense food at Oaks is probably more crowd-pleasing for a suburb like Simi Valley (even though Simi does have a surprising number of surprisingly good ethnic restaurants). There's definitely no "scene" here, but that's one of the things I like about it--the atmosphere is very comfortable, yet still probably nice enough for a date. Oaks is one of my favorite restaurants in the area and definitely a place I would return to.

Oaks Korean BBQ
1970 Sequoia Ave #9
Simi Valley, CA 93063
(805) 583-3434
Oaks Korean BBQ Menu

Restaurant Review #216: Soot Bull Jeep, Koreatown

Soot Bull Jeep has a widespread reputation as one of the best restaurants in Koreatown. It’s also notorious for being one of the smokiest, due to its charcoal (not gas) grills at every table in a dining room that is entirely indoors (and has all the ambiance of a truck stop).
Indeed, I wanted to change clothes when I got home, but while I was actually at the restaurant, I barely noticed the smoke at all. There certainly wasn't a heavy gray cloud smothering the entire room like I was expecting from all the reviews I read. The real problem was the thick coating of black sludge on the underside of the grill—the part that's under the table, the part that I ruined a pair of jeans on.
The massive range hoods at every table actually do a rather good job of getting the smoke out of the place, but at a cost—they're noisy, and combined with the extra-wide tables (to acommodate grills), it's hard to have a conversation in this joint.



The waitress lit our grill right away, and that was when I started to wish I had worn a long-sleeved shirt--the flying embers were nipping at my forearms all night. She also plunked down a plethora of panchan, coaster-sized dishes of sides and condiments— pungent and slightly too spicy for comfort, in a good way—for eating with and between mouthfuls of meat. Our waitress didn't seem to speak English, so we were a little worried when she seemed confused about our order, but she did know enough to tell us which type of beef was the best (we were relatively clueless, having only eaten Korean barbecue one other time).

Her recommendation was right on, but despite this gesture of kindness and her extensive help grilling our food and snipping our meat into edible-sized pieces with scissors (this is a chopstick-only establishment), she was really all business and not terribly pleasant. Somehow ordering a second Sprite made her crack a wide smile, but that was the only indication all night that she might not have hated being there. Drinks come in cans and bottles from the convenience-store cooler at the far end of the dining room--in other words, no free refills. The water cups are small and the food is spicy, so ordering a large beer might be your best bet.



The menu is one sheet of laminated white paper listing various meat options: chicken, squid, beef tongue, pork, spencer steak (also known as boneless ribeye, known for its tenderness and marbling), short ribs, and a few other options. This is not a restaurant for vegetarians—even the tofu soup has meat in it.
The chicken was unexciting, but then, chicken usually is. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I tried the squid on the recommendation of some Yelpers, who raved about the crispiness of the grilled tentacles, but I found it to be flavorless and rubbery. The beef, however, is some of the most flavorful meat you'll ever eat, thanks to the marinade—stick to the beef, and you won’t be disappointed. The portions are a little small and seem a little expensive for the amount of meat you get—but then maybe not, for the amount of sides you get. We had at least 12 on each end of the table—plenty to go around.



The restaurant’s atmosphere may leave much to be desired, but when you have a juicy, charcoal-infused, grill-crisped, searing hot slice of beef in your mouth, you won’t care about any of the other stuff. You can eat it straight or plop it in a ruffly, palm-sized lettuce leaf and add a smear of bean paste. The multitude of sides mean that every other bite can have a different flavor, a different degree of crunch, funk, and heat. Dense, sticky rice will help you get full and provide a respite from all the spiciness of the kim chee.
Though this appears to be a cook-it-yourself restaurant, our waitress actually cooked everything for us (which I much welcomed). The only thing we had to do was to make sure not to leave the meat on the grill too long, which was easy to do since they never brought us any actual plates. I turned my rice bowl into a makeshift plate, but with its small size, eating my meal was a bit awkward. The only other drawback of the cooking method is that I felt like I spent most of the night eating three pieces of meat, then waiting five minutes for the next serving. Also, if you're a slow eater, this is the kind of restaurant where you can quickly get out-eaten by your table mates and find yourself a few bites short of a meal. Otherwise, it's very filling (though not as filling as the all-you-can-eat places).



The parking lot is tight, but there is a parking lot—a guarded, free one, at that, and one where we were able to find a spot at 7:30 on a Saturday night. If you're not so lucky, parking on the street might be a pain, and bring your quarters for the meters. When you’re trying to find the restaurant, don't worry if you can't read Korean—the black and white sign is in English, and relatively easy to spot despite the general barrage of signage that is Koreatown.

Soot Bull Jeep
3136 W 8th St
Los Angeles, CA 90005
(213) 387-3865

Restaurant Review #206: Boneyard Bistro, Sherman Oaks

Ribs

I decided to pay a visit to Boneyard Bistro for two reasons: their extensive beer list and the promise of sweet potato fries. Located on busy Ventura Boulevard amidst dozens of other restaurants, Boneyard Bistro is a bit hard to spot. We had no trouble parking on the street, but we may have benefited from the cold weather keeping people home. Still, the hostess acted like we should have made a reservation (which I always find annoying), but we somehow got what I considered to be the best table in the house--a corner booth next to the window.

The food is rather pricey for what it is (largely barbecue) and where it's located (things are supposed to be cheaper in the Valley, right?), so I ordered two appetizers for my meal instead of an entree. But first, they brought us mini cornbread muffins and crusty, flavorful bread accompanied by butter served at just the right temperature for spreading. I also ordered a hefeweizen beer. The beer list, divided by style, was quite extensive, but they didn't have the first two beers I asked for, which made me wonder how much of their overall list they actually had on hand. I ended up with the Avery White Rascal for $10 (a six pack of this beer is only $9.49 at BevMo!). With most bottles of respectable beer priced at $8 and up, I didn't really feel like ordering more than one. That's a lot of money for a twelve-ounce bottle of beer. On Mondays, however, beer is half-price. Monday is also fried chicken night, and several other nights have special themes as well. They serve brunch on Sundays.


Pulled pork dumplings

The first appetizer I tried, pulled pork dumplings in a barbecue beurre blanc sauce, was fairly disappointing. The sauce was a lot more strongly flavored than I anticipated based on the description--I guess I was focused on the beurre blanc part of the description, not the barbecue. There was so much sauce that it overwhelmed the filling, and the dumplings, which were more like ravioli, were difficult to cut into bite-sized pieces. The coleslaw, however, was excellent--not too mayonaissey and nice and crunchy.


Sweet potato fries

Fortunately, the sweet potato fries lived up to my expectations. Not only were they wonderfully crispy, which is difficult to do at home, the portion was huge, allowing me to enjoy some as leftovers. I combined my sweet potato fries with some aioli that came with a friend's dish, and it really complemented the fries perfectly. I think that aioli should be served with every plate of fries.


The Classic

Boneyard Bistro serves a selection of burgers with a range of toppings such as applewood bacon, sauteed onions, and sauteed chantrelle mushrooms. All of their burgers are made of Snake River Farms American Kobe-style Wagyu beef, which is leaps and bounds above other hamburger meat. This stuff practically melts in your mouth and is totally worth the seemingly ridiculous $20 price tag. In my experience, other places that charge $20 for a burger don't even come close. Also, I've looked into ordering this beef directly from Snake River Farms, and it really ain't cheap. I think that gorging myself on a $32 double burger would probably be a better idea than ordering the stuff raw--then I don't have to risk screwing it up with my lack of meat-cooking skills. Meditrina Cafe in Venice serves a similar burger, but Boneyard's is significantly better.


Dining room

While we were dining, Chef Aaron Robins visited every table. He didn't strike me as terribly personable, but he has a behind-the-scenes kind of job after all, and I still appreciated the effort he went to to make sure all his customers were enjoying their meals. The dining room is small, with a few private booths, generously sized dark wood tables, exposed brick walls, and framed mirrors. A large flat-screen TV near the kitchen detracts a bit from the otherwise warm atmosphere. Overall, the restaurant and staff had a very friendly, down-to-earth vibe, but I felt a little jilted when our server dropped the check on our table without ever asking if we wanted dessert. I thought that perhaps they didn't offer dessert, but the website says that I missed out on chocolate whiskey flourless cake, dulce de leche bon bons, and tawny ports.

Overall, I really liked this restaurant and I plan to return for more sweet potato fries, my very own burger, and with any luck, some dessert. I think I'll pass on the beer, though, and stop at BevMo on the way home instead.

Boneyard Bistro

13539 Ventura Blvd
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
818.906.7427
Boneyard Bistro Website