Emo's Got Pretty Good Korean
Wednesday evening I watched the Upper East Side spread out in splashy colors and al fresco seating from a crosstown bus. The bus crept out of the park and slowed at each corner, pausing before elegant buildings that stood arrogant and affluent over Museum Mile street signs. Yellow light bled from the windows of duplexes on Park, shades open to boast to the street of minimalist decor and blond walls.
I hadn't seen much of the east side beyond 5th Ave.'s stretch of museums. As the bus chugged past Lexington Ave., the quietly proud buildings turned to bars and orange lights. It was 9 o'clock and I was hungry and tired, and as the bus lurched east the avenues became more vivid, more demanding of my attention. We got off at 2nd Ave., which was artificially brightened by restaurant signs and full of outdoor seating and tipsy dining patrons, unnecessarily loud on their cellphones. The weather had turned from blissfully hot to miserably humid. I was irritable. I had just lost a job I hadn't even started, and the street and sidewalk were too noisy.
Emo's, a new Korean restaurant just north of 81st St., was noisy too, but not so obnoxiously bright and chaotic. It was a squeeze to get in, the front door opening to a squiggly bar, the patrons of which crowded the narrow strip of hallway that led to the dining area. The restaurant takes the form of a slightly deformed horseshoe?slip past the bar and around the corner and a marginally larger dining area extends on the other side. In the disproportionately large belly of the horseshoe are more tables, enormous wooden masks hanging on the walls and a central room that I presumed to be a kitchen, with one small window from which escaped blue light and occasional plates of food. We sat on dark wooden chairs and ate off dark wooden tables, bathed in the reflected light of cream-colored walls. An orange structure that looked like a huge fan and emanated soft light spread out over part of the ceiling. The other lights were small and curved, one hanging over each of the tables.
When we arrived, the tables were full of couples finishing their meals and drinking the last of their wine. At some point it became clear that music was playing?occasionally I could hear a long, smooth note through the speakers, but loud conversations obscured most of the song. Primitive drawings hung in frames on one wall?little houses, strange sketches done in black ink. In the horseshoe's belly, those huge masks loomed, lips curled, wooden eyes wide, cheeks fat?nothing I'd really want to eat beneath. The windows at the front of the room were unfolded like accordions and we could hear horns blaring, feel the heavy summer wind.
We ordered shi geum chi gook, which is, according to the menu, "miso soup with spinach and clams." It came in a black bowl with diced tofu and one clam, still shelled, bobbing in the broth. They were a bit more generous with the spinach, long, hot strips of it settling at the bottom. On a rectangular china plate, we were served mung bean pancakes; they looked and tasted like potato pancakes. The lightly browned edges were crisp and greasy, but the inside was sticky, a soft white paste. When adequately doused with dipping sauce?sweet soy sauce?the pancakes were appropriately sugary and greasy; alone they were soft and somewhat bland, like some kind of partially congealed batter.
Entrees were initially appealing. Jap chae, a plate of cellophane noodles and vegetables, came drenched in another cloyingly sweet vinaigrette soy sauce. Strings of shiitake mushrooms and spinach turned dark and sweet in the sauce. The flounder was pan-fried and served with a house salad dressed with sesame sauce. Good fish?crispy, flavored with salad-dressing runoff and browned spices my waitress couldn't identify, flaking away from strips of bones?if a little dry. The barbecued marinated chicken was juicy and sat next to a bed of greens and a mini-plate of miso dipping sauce. Strips of green lettuce were identified as "red leaf" and large mint leaves were called "sesame leaf." These weren't the typically slender leaves of the mint plants that pop up and overtake spring gardens, but enormous spade-shaped leaves large enough to engulf a good-sized piece of barbecued chicken and an adequate dipping of miso sauce.
Our table was set with large spoons and silver chopsticks, heavy and awkward in my hand?no forks, which meant I had to eat long, tangled cellophane noodles with my flashing chopsticks, more often than not dropping food back to my plate or dripping sauce down my chin. The noodles turned brown in the sauce, which overpowered the flavor of the vegetables. At first I didn't really mind?it's not a bad sauce, and while shiitake mushrooms have that nice bouncy texture, I'm not usually crazy about the taste?but it got a little too sugary to finish. I ate half the fish?it was too dry to hold much more appeal. The chicken, which I ate the least of, still seemed satisfactory, but my dining companion said he'd grown sick of the taste.
So our meals became a little monotonous, which might explain the various bowls of sides that accompanied them. The largest was a plate of kimchi, which you need a masochistic affinity for spiciness to enjoy: cabbage spiced with red hot chilies that sear your mouth, and pickled so you get a dose of vinegar in the wound. The cabbage came with a modest pickle slice, which I didn't touch. The chilies stain everything deeply red, so those strips of cabbage even look painful. The other sides were harmless and occasionally good. One bowl held crispy strips of radishes marinated in soy sauce and flecked with green and red peppers. Everything in the soy sauce tasted sweet; the radishes were no exception. The bean sprouts had been cooked in sesame oil with red pepper but unlike the kimchi were seasoned with a tolerable amount of red pepper that left them barely spicy at all.
The two seaweed sides looked entirely different; one bowl held light green strips cooked in a watery vinaigrette, the texture visibly firm and slick, the other held shriveled clumps of dark green weeds fried in sesame oil. The light one tasted like a store-bought seaweed salad?those rectangles of sweet, moist vegetables packaged in plastic and usually slimy. The sesame oil seaweed was much better. It reminded me of the meals I used to have at my neighbors'?devout Japanophiles?when they would set out platters of sashimi (pink strips of tuna, marbled salmon, whitefish) and bowls of sticky rice and stacks of dark seaweed, which was good enough to eat plain. If you wanted to use the seaweed in the conventional manner, you got a strong, musty wrapping with a distinct flavor that even all the fish and rice couldn't overpower. Emo's seaweed side was like that.
At 10, the smooth cylinder-shaped and flower-shaped lights dimmed abruptly, like half the power had been switched off. It changed the space, made it feel more angled?the wall was suddenly lined with pronounced shadows, the fan-like light seemed to stick out more from the ceiling. While we sat in the dim light our desserts came, large glass bowls of vanilla and green tea ice cream with sprigs of mint in each. The green tea ice cream was strange and musty; I'm glad I've tried it, but I don't think I'll order it again. I left some in the bowl and ate the mint sprig.
The tables had emptied by now. The restaurant was ready to close, ready to shutter the windows on the undiminished noise of 2nd Ave. The waitresses sat in the back, counting tips, waiting to go home. As we left, with individually wrapped peach gummies, the volume of the music increased. It was 10:30-ish, time for the restaurant to close, but the squiggly bar up front was still busy and loud and brightly lit. And so was the street. I felt uninspired and unchanged, still tired and irritable and unemployed. Emo's music?Annie Lennox, or something that sounded like Annie Lennox?clashed with the street noise. Somewhere, the bus I needed to take lumbered west, past glorious Upper East Side apartments. I hailed a cab, which felt indulgent, and went home.