FOOD CULTURE INSIDE TELEGRAPH’S ROWDY, TIPSY KOREAN DRINKING DENS.
Drinking dens of Koreatown dish out comfort fare past 1 a.m.
At a Korean bar on Telegraph Avenue in what’s sometimes referred to as Oakland’s Koreatown, you pick at a sectioned tube of squid squiggled with brick-red chojang. That joins a craggy heap of syrup-lacquered wings, a plate of Spam-riddled fried rice and a seafood pancake. The server asks if you want a large beer and you say yes, not realizing this means a plastic 40-ounce of Hite, which drinks less like beer than newly thawed ditchwater. That’s why you like it. You’ve been eating and drinking for hours, so the server hands over a bottle of grapefruit-flavored soju on the house. This drinks like liquefied multivitamin chewables, but you sort of like it, too. Rap rumbles throughout the dim interior, loud enough to make you shout to be heard, but not enough to rattle the beer glasses. People are cheering because the Warriors are on TV. Marijuana smoke mingles with the smells emanating from the fryer and grill, and if you didn’t know better, you’d guess it was snaking over from one of the cozy wooden booths shrouded in a red awning.
Hoarse, tipsy, chomping on a wing that tastes like it’s flapped through a takeout box of General Tso’s, you remind yourself that a meal at Dan Sung Sa — perhaps Oakland’s most bustling pojangmacha — isn’t about the food.
In South Korea, a pojangmacha, often shortened to pocha, is an inexpensive outdoor food cart serving soju shots with drink-friendly small plates, or anju. The word “pojangmacha” actually means “covered wagon.” In the United States, the carts become lively brick-and-mortar “gastropubs” that stay open past 1 a.m. Much like an American bar with burgers, pizza and tacos occupying different sections of the same menu to complement the necessary rivers of beer and liquor, they offer a broad spectrum of dishes: burbling hot pots that fortify a soon-tobe-assaulted gut, barbecue variations without an authentic lingering charcoal scent, rice cake rafts floating on fiery seas of thinned gochujang, fried chicken wings and fusion excursions, like bulgogi-topped fries and nachos.
As has been reported in local media for years, the proliferation of Korean restaurants along Telegraph in Oakland reflects the efforts of real estate developers more than the neighborhood’s residents. At the same time, their presence may influence the eating and drinking habits of locals. Each of the pojangmacha hugging Telegraph Avenue offers an angle on the form.
Hoarse, tipsy, chomping on a wing that tastes like it’s flapped through a takeout box of General Tso’s, you remind yourself that a meal at Dan Sung Sa — perhaps Oakland’s most bustling pojangmacha — isn’t about the food.