On the East Side, this is a pretty well-known Korean restaurant. I do remember that it was more on the high-end side. The restaurant is in the Asian mostly Korean area of the City and I always stop there when I visit a Chinese Doctor for treatment of my arthritis. It is full of Asian people and you hardly see a white person. This tells you that the food is authentic and purely Korean. I love their hot cabbage soup, it brings tears to my eyes and makes my nose run (a good thing). Sul Long Tang, their signature dish, is a white, unsalted soup that's made by cooking beef bones for many, many hours. It's creamy while simple and light. The soup contains rice, vermicelli, and thin slices of stewed beef on top to which you can add scallions and sea salt (from bowls on the table) as much as you'd like. I have never had a bad experience here. Go and be prepared for an excellent meal. Wonderful ambiance also.

Gam Mee Ok
43 W 32nd St.
New York, NY 10001
212/695-4113

Honestly, you should go to Los Angeles if you want excellent Korean food outside Korea, but as a New Yorker, I make do with Gam Mee Ok. Our Koreatown in midtown Manhattan is so small it's referred to as Koreablock, but at least you can find really good solontang after a night of drinking and partying. Solontang is bone marrow soup and it's Gam Mee Ok's specialty. They have vats in the kitchen where they slow-cook bone marrow to ensure the most flavorful broth. It's the best hangover cure. Just sprinkle a little salt and scallions and enjoy the rice and noodles floating in there.

Gam Mee Ok is THE place to go in New York after partying all night. It's open 24 hours a day so it doesn't matter whether you crawl out of the bars at 2am or 7am, there's a hangover cure waiting for you here.

The menu at Gam Mee Ok is limited, with a few things on the menu like "blood" sausage, pig ears, and boiled squid that only the bravest will want to try. I actually really like these dishes, but when I go to Gam Mee Ok, it's for the Sul an Tang, a beef marrow soup with noodles, slices of beef, and some organ type meat, that you salt to your taste at the table. They don't serve ban chan, just kimchi and the turnip kimchi that they cut with scissors at your table. I know a lot of people who say that this is the best kimchi in the city, but it's a little too sweet for me to call the best, and I prefer Cho Dan Gol's.

Back to the Sul an Tang and its anti-hangover powers.... Well, that's the legend, but I'm not 100% convinced. But then again, just because it doesn't avert a hangover after drinking till 7am doesn't mean it doesn't work at all...