With Dennis Lee, one of our fair city's most exciting chefs, now busy with the April 1 barbeque-centric opening menu at Magnolia Brewery's new Dogpatch location, now is a great time to step back and revisit the city's definitive destination for New Korean meets New California cuisine, Namu Gaji. It feels like decades since Lee and his brothers David and Daniel opened the original Namu in the Inner Richmond, a world away from the corner it now occupies at 18th and Dolores.
Like many Namu and Namu Gaji devotees, it was their humble street food stall, and the Korean-influenced tacos, at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market six years ago that initially won me over. And here we are where those Namu Gaji tacos are still terrific in 2014, but you can get international-inspired tacos of any genre pretty much anywhere these days. However, my favorite dish from the street food days hasn't caught the national trend circuit: the brilliant and immensely refreshing bibim salad ($8/$10).
It's not a salad necessarily nor is it bibimbap, the classic Korean stone pot dish. The bibim is Lee's adaptation of a dish called bibim kook soo that his mom would make all the time at home growing up. The name translates to "mixed bowl of noodles," which indeed you're supposed to do before eating.
Chilled soba noodles are used as the base, a change from his mother's recipe, but the slippery noodles are the perfect calming foil for the kimchee-fortified sesame vinaigrette. The fun's in the textures: the crunch and nutty component with fried walnuts, the soft and spongy diced tofu, crispness in purple onions, romaine lettuce and cucumbers -- each element presents a wonderful compare-and-contrast opportunity. Kimchee relish on top exerts its influence, and what seems at first like a calm, tranquil dish becomes thrilling.
Lee's deeply personal cooking provides vegetarians several different dishes to choose from, though be forewarned some are geared more toward the Mission nightlife circuit (also known as hangover cures/not the most healthful). Think okonomiyaki and the poutine that combines fries, kimchee and kewpie mayonnaise in a distinct mash-up invention called "gamja fries."
There happens to be a famous ice cream shop right next door to Namu Gaji and a certain popular park just across the street. On the next sunny San Francisco afternoon, you can't get a better lunch-dessert-hangout in the sun trio than that.
Even as Lee shifts his focus for the time being to partnering barbeque with English session ales, don't forget about Namu Gaji's bibim. As a noodle lunch or salad side or just plain fun mixed salad, the bibim really should be the official San Francisco warm weather lunch dish.
499 Dolores, 431-6268.
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