. — B.A. 9023 Washington Blvd., Pico Rivera, dalrae.com (Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times) Ham Ji Park Ham Ji Park is famously home to one of Koreatown’s most enduring hangover remedies: the scarlet-red pork neck and potato stew called gamjatang. The broth
stew at Ham Ji Park in Koreatown, and not as heavily adorned as the one at Gamjatang House in Garden Grove, where the stew is cloaked under a jumble of perilla leaves. But it has that rich, carnal quality present in all good gamjatang. And the heat
nose-tingling, cloudy hot mustard sauce that Choi serves with the stew. Gamjatop’s gamjatang is milder in both spice and color than the rufous red stew at Ham Ji Park in Koreatown, and not as heavily adorned as the one at Gamjatang House in Garden Grove
accompaniment to goat stew. It was the year I learned to eat. A couple of weeks ago, I wandered into Ham Ji Park for what must have been the 30th time, a battered Korean restaurant that hadn’t been around during my long-ago year on Pico, but feels as if it might
have been. Like most of the better places in Koreatown, the restaurant has a lengthy menu but in fact specializes in just a couple of things: grilled pork ribs and the pork-neck chowder called gamjatang. The pork-neck chowder gamjatang at Ham Ji Park
serves its boat noodles without the organ meats too. 5183 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; (323) 665-1035. Gamjatang The gamjatang at Ham Ji Park in Los Angeles. (Camellia Tse ) Is Korean cuisine unusually rich in soothing hangover remedies? It would seem so
. Jinro soju has long been the world’s most popular spirit brand, according to the Spirits Business trade publication. Could one cure lie in Ham Ji Park’s gamjatang? The scarlet, sputtering-hot soup, made with potatoes and meaty neckbones, certainly feels
ribs from Ham Ji Park and the Guatemalan black-clam cocktails from La Cevicheria. It is surrounded by both churches and nightlife. The residential streets paralleling Crenshaw are a fantasyland of turn-of-the-century Los Angeles architecture; on the
military stew you get at Chunju Han-il Kwan, or maybe at Roy Choi’s Pot. Or the potato-pork neck soup you find at Yangji or Ham Ji Park. Or that giant crab pot at Ondal 2. Or the shabu-shabu-like jing-gee skhan at Seoul Garden. Actually, unlike the dozens