Gaenali Bon Ga

There are right ways and wrong ways to experience the Garden Grove Korean restaurant Gaenali Bon Ga, and in retrospect, we might have done it the wrong way. We’re fans of a Korean dish that’s rarely but sometimes found in Orange County, spicy marinated raw crab, but didn’t order it here, where it’s one of the specialties and not terribly expensive.

Instead, we went with several other items we normally like, including spicy octopus (nakji bokkum) served atypically here with noodles, seafood pancake with green onion (haemul pajun), the famous DIY pork wrap dish daeji bossam, hot tofu soup, and banchan. Like the raw crab, the seafood pancake and bossam are Gaenali Bon Ga house specials, so our experience here was somewhat informative.

On the positive side, everything arrived quickly from the kitchen, and quite hot: the soup arrived boiling, and the pancake, bossam jungsik (portioned for one rather than sharing), and bokkum plates were all extra large, guaranteeing a filling meal for around $30 per person. Similarly, although there were only a handful of small-ish banchan, several fat slices of tofu accompanied portions of bean sprouts, kimchi, and cooked vegetables.