I don't really know why I don't go to Koreatown more often, other than the fact that many of the restaurants there can get pretty pricey. But for months I had been craving bibimbap, which has been an obsession since my trip to Korea two years ago. I especially love the crackling sound of the rice when the bowl arrives at your table and you quickly mix the raw egg on top with all the meat and vegetables in the burning hot stone bowl. And the six or eight side dishes that come with every entree. 

Last week I met up with Kian from Red Cook at Kunjip on 32nd St. I'm not sure if it has the best bibimbap in Ktown, but certainly one of the most affordable. We spent under $30 including tip for lunch for two people, for a smorgasbord of food. Other than the above bibimbap with ground beef and vegetables, here are a few more reasons to go. 

The spicy tofu and vegetable soup. Unlike with most bright red Korean foods, this isn't going to burn your throat. It comes with the bibimbap and a few other lunch specials.

Like with any Korean meal, you get a bunch of little banchan (small dishes), including two types of cabbage kimchi, dried squid, fermented soy beans, spicy tofu, and jicama.

Maybe this post should be subtitled "How I feel about Grand Sichuan after living in China and teaching Sichuan cooking for a living."

While I had never in love with the Grand Sichuan chainlet around New York, it had always been a dependable source of cheap, tasty, and spicy food. It was also a source of fond memories. A year after college, having finally escaped the suburbs of Boston, my earlytwentysomething self had spent the first summer in the city exploring every single recommendation from a battered copy of Time Out's Cheap Eats issue. At the time, it was my bible. Grand Sichuan seemed to be the go-to Chinese restaurant outside Chinatown, so I dutifully tried all the locations, from St. Marks to Hells Kitchen to Murray Hill. That summer, like all others in New York, was unbearable. Eating sweat-inducing dishes like Chongqing chicken and mapo tofu in an air-conditioned environment was, really, the only way to eat spicy dishes in 95-degree humidity. 

Yet, as somewhat of a stickler for authenticity, I was always irked by Grand Sichuan's highlighting Shanghainese xiao long bao on the menus. The long list of Cantonese dishes, "Diet" dishes, and Americanized stuff like Orange Flavored Chicken didn't help, either. While each trip ended with me and my companion(s) stuffing our faces and delightfully bringing home leftovers, something still felt amiss.

Hankering for a sandwich while in the East Village last week, I stopped at Marco Polo Café out of sheer curiosity. The tiny shop on St. Mark's bills itself as "Asian-Italian New Cuisine." The menu, on the other hand, reveals its Asian influence to be entirely Chinese. So, in the spirit of this blog, what the heck.

The restaurant is the product of a Sicilian-American and mainland Chinese husband-and-wife team. So, naturally, you can order dumplings and buns, or pasta, like bison meatballs over penne. (Unlike another Italian-Chinese partnership I wrote about last year, whose menu was completely Western.) But...what's so interesting about a seemingly schizophrenic food selection?

Well, the restaurant does try to fuse flavors on a few of the items. I decided to forgo the Dumplavoli, which, while having a catchy name, is merely a plate of five raviolis and six dumplings.