4.201 Pyongyang Naeng Myeon

Cycle 4 – Item 201

25 (Thu) July 2013

Pyongyang Naeng Myeon

3.0

at Neungla

-Pangyu, Bundang, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

with KHJ, PHY

Neungla (능라) is a Korean restaurant.  Northern in style, the menu offers most of the classics, including mul naeng myeon.  The restaurant is new, just a couple years old.

Can’t decide if the building was designed to be ultra-modern, or it’s just a plain concrete block.
In light of the mundane interior, I’m leaning towards plain concrete block.

KHJ may be the savviest person that I know when it comes to Korean/Chinese/Japanese restaurants.  He seems to have been to all the landmark establishments, while keeping up with the latest trends.  Fortunately for me, his parents also hail from the north, so we share a similar stylistic sensibility.  I’ve come to trust his recommendations implicitly.  However, we argue about anything not related to food – he loves spewing out random unsubstantiated factoids culled from the internet; I suppose that internet surfing is what helps to inform him about restaurants.

Applying the tasting framework from my Pyongyang-style MNM project (see SSPYSP):

BROTH.  Beefy.  Dry.  In the same beefy-dry family as Pil-Dong Myeonok, Pyongyang Myeonok, and Bong Piyang.  Just the way that I like it.  But when I asked the owner about a connection to any of the other three, he denied it outright, acting a bit offended.  In fact, he accused Pil-Dong Myeonok of using chicken feet in their broth.  Although he didn’t look much older than 60, he also claimed to remember his father back in the day making MNM broth from pheasant that he’d hunted.

NOODLES.  Little buckwheat flavor, no graininess in texture.

TOPPINGS.  Sliced beef  + boiled egg (half), pickled radish, salted cucumber, sprinkle of sliced scallion.  Daepa aside, which I detest per se in MNM, everything was okay.

CONCLUSION.  Not great, but relatively one of the better Pyongyang-style MNMs on the market.  Falls short of Bong Piyang and Pyongyang Myeonok but beats out Pil-Dong Myeonok for simplicity in toppings.

PRICE.  10,000 won + (ouch) 7,000 won for a double order (gobbaegi (곱배기)) or extra noodles after the fact (sari (사리)).

(See also MUL NAENG MYEON)

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)

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