Dosirak

30 E. 13th St. (betw. University Pl. & 5th Ave.)

212-366-9299

Adam and I have barely opened our menus when he gasps. We're at Dosirak, an unassuming little spot off Union Square that serves simple Korean food at bargain prices.

"You know what you want already?" I ask.

"No! Look at the Romanization on this thing!" English spelling of Korean words is based on pronunciation, and is thus rather?subjective. Korean restaurants tend to keep it basic for American folks, but not Dosirak. "Double consonants everywhere!" he notes with approval.

We start off with an order of kimchijeon, a rice-flour pancake packed with spicy (but not five-alarm) kimchee ($8). "I could eat kimchee till the cows come home," Adam declares.

Coming to understand kimchee as a pickling process, its results not unlike sauerkraut, a mainstay of my German-American childhood, helped put to rest years of leeriness. Still, his zest for fermented cabbage is a mite puzzling. I press him for an explanation.

"Well, I tend to really like foods that are?"

"Slimy?" I offer.

"No, no!" he dismisses me with a brisk wave and snaps into a diatribe on slime-addled okra. "Let's say 'acrid.' Olives, anchovies-that sort of thing. Lip-smacking!"

We've also ordered the goguma mandu gui ($5)-crisp deep-fried dumplings heaping with sweet potato, peas and onions. Adam tips his Heineken to a wise pairing: the pancake's pleasing, tangy bite and the voluptuous fluff of yam. He's impressed at the kimchijeon's triumph over grease; while it's a far cry from oil-free, there's no trace of the drippy glisten one expects.

When Adam and I came here about two years ago, I'd been disappointed with the bibimbap: veggies, meat or tofu, rice and sesame oil, spicy red paste on the side, with an egg on top (usually optional), all served in a sizzling iron pot that lends the rice bottom a heavenly crunch. I'd found Dosirak's bland, and it wasn't served in the hot pot. Tonight the nakji bokkeumbap ($10), a sauteed-octopus dish, is alluring, but I decide to give the bibimbap ($9) another try. How could I not, when they've promised-in italics no less-to use a "hand-gathered Knoll Crest egg"? While I've never had bibimbap to rival that of Miyako in Williamsburg, this is impressive: copious chunks of flavorful tofu, a seductive sesame taste, fresh, tender vegetables and a just-right crunchy golden bottom.

While breaking up said bottom with my spoon, I hear "Loeshbahn?" Thinking Adam is proffering a Korean condiment, I look around the table. Turns out he's yammering about Lojban, the 50-year-old manmade language spoken by about a thousand people worldwide. For "fun," he wrote his own history of the English language and is now translating it into Lojban on his pocket computer. Since he's a former cartographer who speaks a dozen languages and has a rocket scientist turned daytrader for a brother, this comes as no surprise. The shocker of the evening is that someone's agreed to marry this geek.