A true noodle joint cometh.
At lower Sixth Ave.'s Ony Noodles, and now University Pl.'s Mandoo, the cuisine's harmonic economy is authentic. The vegetables have snap and color, and the service is quick. The new restaurant is an expansion of the tiny original on Koreatown's W. 32nd St. strip. Downtown, the place is bigger, the menu expanded, the clientele more diverse, the liquor license in full effect. One thing hasn't changed at all: "Mandoo" still means "dumplings."
The mandoo at Mandoo are handmade with green, orange or white noodle wrappers, stuffed with meat and/or vegetables and pinched into a tri-cornered pocket. The dumplings are loosely stuffed, which adds to the homemade feel but makes them a bit difficult to eat in more than one bite?and they're big for one bite. No matter, as long as you keep the morsels from falling apart into your dipping sauce. Servers help diners mix that at their tables, from provided soy, vinegar and chili preparations.
The boiled vegetable mandoo are a tad bland. This is perhaps as it should be, as it's impossible to appreciate Korean food while harboring any reticence toward grease or salt. Healthy eaters: Note that Mandoo's fried dumplings are lightly pan-fried, not deep-fried like dumplings in Chinatown.
The filling of the seafood dumplings is made of shrimp, imitation crab meat and dough, sort of like a fish cake, but it comes off youthful and pure. Beef dumplings deliver the flavor of marinated meat and fresh sauteed scallions, delightful with the sculpted noodle. Most of Mandoo's dumpling plates are $7 to $9; a combo platter with four each of beef, vegetable and seafood mandoo is a bargain at $11.
The restaurant's physical setup is a little strange. A colorfully lit bar and maybe a half-dozen tables compose the entire street-level operation. Most of the seating is in the restaurant's basement. Efficient layout and restrained lighting save the windowless space from a cafeteria atmosphere. Parties of four get semi-private, black-cushioned booths that feel minimally deluxe as soon as the gratis kimchee and pickled yellow radish hit the table.
Appetizer options other than dumplings include three kinds of pan-fried fritters called jun: fish, corn and potato ($5 each). The potato is the most flavorless latke imaginable and is to be avoided. Corn jun is much better, as the flavor almost qualifies as a point to the extremities of oil and starch. Fish jun is a variation on a Korean staple, the seafood pancake; there's an entree version on the "special dishes" section of the menu, for serious grease lovers only.
Three starter soups (also $5 each) should be skipped in favor of dumplings, or one of the meal-sized soups on the "stews" list. Those are less bold and hearty than most of the stews you'd find in Koreatown, which are liable to have been made with parts of animals most Americans don't want to know about (and in most cases won't, exactly). Mandoo's lighter approach is in tune with the half-assimilated ease of its core clientele, and perfect for furtive Korean-food neophytes. To make things even easier, Mandoo's lunchtime prices are a dollar or two lower than the dinner numbers listed here.
Kimchee stew ($9) is described as a "casserole-style stew of kimchee and pork," which doesn't convey the dish at all. (I wonder: Would an Asian restaurant risk coming off phony by accurately describing its food in English?) It's a cabbage soup made with lots of red pepper, more leafy greens, some glass noodles and a smidgen of stewed meat for extra flavor. Simple, sweltering, satisfying. My kimchee stew's quality greens made me want to return and try yuk gae jang ($9)?"mountain greens and beef in a spicy broth."
Tea enthusiasts should be sure to try Mandoo's house corn-and-barley variety. I ordered a cup only because I had a head cold, and found it better for that than any of a half-dozen remedies I'd picked up earlier that day at CVS.
The menu's "noodles" section is worth attention if you don't get your fill of pasta during a dumpling course. Be sure to ask your Mandoo server whether a noodle dish is served hot or cold, if you care, as the menu isn't always clear on the matter. An order of herbal noodles ($11) brings a salad of root veggies and greens with chilled soba and a vinegary sweet-and-sour sauce, pleasantly natural-medicine-flavored with mugwort, over everything. Joll noodles ($8) are also cold, though thick and chewy. The salad with them includes boiled egg, and the sauce is spicier. Mandoo ramen ($8) is hot-pepper vegetable soup with delicious egg-noodle corkscrews and a couple of bonus beef dumplings.
All of Mandoo's "rice dishes" are variations on classic bibimbop (here "bibim bab," $9)?the supremely satisfying, soulful dish that, if Korean food ever "breaks" in America, will surely lead the way (McBibimbop is a distinct 21st-century possibility). Mandoo's version is notable for especially tasty sticky rice and a rice-vinegar sweetness that demands robust use of chili-pepper sauce for balance. When I told my server I preferred to mix my own bowl of crunchy mountain vegetables and rice, she all but urged me to include my entire serving of crimson paste. "It's not that spicy," she claimed.
Three of the menu's six rice bowls come in hot stone ceramics. That's a Korean-restaurant feature that's usually worth the extra few dollars, as the superheated stoneware tends to sear the outer layer of rice just enough to make the whole dish as crunchy as breakfast cereal, once you mix it up. It didn't work out that way with my bulgogi (beef) hot stone rice bowl ($13). It hadn't quite achieved rice-crusting temperature. Perhaps the true stone-bowl effect was judged to be on the far side of Mandoo's consistently moderate line.