When it’s time to unwind

If you tend to only enjoy craft cocktails — the kind garnished with fancy foraged things and served in vintage glassware — this is not the Koreatown list for you. The neighborhood offers plenty of excellent high-end cocktails, including those at the Normandie Club, Here’s Looking at You and the Walker Inn, along with a host of some of the best dive bars in the city. (You really need to have a burger, a shot and a beer at HMS Bounty at some point in your life.) But the following is a group of drinking establishments for those who want a certain kind of night out in K-town: one fueled by repeated bottles of soju. The drink is made by fermenting rice, then filtering and distilling it to create a mild-tasting, clear spirit — a friend described it as tasting like a watered-down vodka — that’s anywhere from around 15% to 50% ABV. It’s a drink that inspires a happy sort of buzz, one that only improves with that second and third shot. ¶ You can, and should, sip your soju between chopsticks full of galbi, but this list should inspire a night out worthy of many bottles of the stuff, pitchers of Hite, Korean pop music and hot skillets full of cheese corn. For those unfamiliar with the concept of cheese corn, it’s a mound of sweet corn covered in melted cheese, and it will become your best friend at the end of a long evening. There will be alcohol. There will be karaoke. There should be fun, and a hangover. Just remember to feed your designated driver.

Photographs by Kent Nishimura Los Angeles Times A TOAST is made at Prizon Bar, where patrons willingly become inmates surrounded by cell bars and chain-link fence. Koreatown is home to a number of soju joints.