In the category of the world’s best stews, two of my top nominees are Korean gamja tang and Polish bigos. The Korean potato stew and the Polish sauerkraut one have one major thing in common–they’re anchored by a (perhaps not-so-) healthy dose of pork. Beyond that, pleasantly spicy gamja tang and tangy, cabbage-filled bigos, or Hunter’s Stew, don’t share much besides my undying affection.
But here’s an awful secret about me: While I wouldn’t say I actively dislike potatoes, I would generally rather eat practically anything else. The spuds in my gamja tang usually go mostly uneaten. Luckily at Ko Hyang House in Chantilly, there is an alternative that’s won my heart. Wooguhji tang replaces the potato with tender napa cabbage leaves. You see where I’m going with this? This less common stew is a mashup of two of the greatest winter dishes on the planet.
No matter what you order, though, I heartily recommend petite Ko Hyang House. At 11:45 a.m. on a Friday, I was far from alone. Most of the other guests in the busy dining room seemed to be enjoying extracting the meat from neckbones in their gamja tang. However, the soup-focused menu runs the gamut from beefy broth with noodles to spicy goat with vegetables to blood sausage.
Service is friendly and helpful, but I like the fact that hot tea and cold water are self-serve, allowing me to fill up as much as I want without a wait. Food arrives quickly, including four banchan. The highlight among them is a zippy, effervescent radish kimchi.
The easiest way to eat the wooguhji is to immediately remove all three meaty, dinosaur-like neckbones from the bubbling crimson broth. That makes it easier to spoon out the chile-flecked liquid, but also get at the velvety cabbage. The greatest pleasures come from a combination of leaf and flesh. Grab bites off the bones with teeth or chopsticks–some sections are easier to navigate with one, some the other.
As you dispatch of the soup, it thickens and intensifies in flavor. And as you finish, your feelings of contentment grow just as your lunch disappears.
4265 Brookfield Corporate Dr., Chantilly
Feature image by Alice Levitt
For more restaurant reviews, subscribe to our Food newsletter.
