#KOREATOWN RESTAURANTS PATCH#
#KOREATOWN RESTAURANTS PASSWORD#

Netflix has even gotten into the spirit recently the streaming service brought a real-life version of its hit Korean series Squid Game to Koreatown, where fans participated in the show’s version of “Red Light, Green Light” and ate dalgona cookies, a Korean street snack. It draws day-trippers looking to dip into the “ hallyu” trend of K-dramas, K-pop, and K-beauty. On Interstate 10 near the Normandie Avenue exit, a sign installed in 1982 still beckons to the heart of Koreatown. Visitors find it in the riot of hangul (Korean language) signs, old-school malls like Koreatown Plaza, and residents like my aunt Young-hee, who has lived her entire adult life here and never learned English. Unauthorized use is prohibited.īut amid celebrity-backed barbecue restaurants and gleaming new hotels, vestiges of the old Koreatown still exist.

It’s a hub for business travelers from abroad. There are fewer mom-and-pop restaurants-some, victims of the pandemic-and more millennial-owned cafés. It’s a neighborhood literally on the rise with construction cranes crowding the landscape. Like many places across the country, Koreatown is changing. Today, my parents would feel disoriented, too.

#KOREATOWN RESTAURANTS PASSWORD#

In Koreatown, we found the password to unlock the “American Dream” we had traveled so far to find.

#KOREATOWN RESTAURANTS PATCH#

In this bustling, multicultural patch east of Miracle Mile and west of Art Deco downtown, people spoke our language and ate the same foods. Back then, there were no glamorous hotel bars and certainly no speakeasies.įor immigrants like us, this neighborhood was a familiar way station in the inscrutable America of the 1970s. My family came to America in 1974, a year after I was born, and made our way to Koreatown. More than that, it’s an unexpected reference to my immigrant roots. Instead, it’s the name of a long-standing, late-night Korean restaurant serving comfort in the form of spicy soondubu chigae tofu stew. I’m in the lobby of the Line LA hotel, where a deejay spins hip-hop, a trendy crowd samples vegan nachos, and more than a few are sipping “Purple Haze” cocktails.Īgainst the din, a concierge quietly hands me a slip of paper that reads “ BCD Tofu.” It’s not the password to the hotel’s Wifi or its speakeasy.

This isn’t the Koreatown of my childhood.

Koreatown restaurants