Favorite Korean: Manna

Manna on 10th and Irving in the Inner Sunset is exactly the kind of place our family loves discovering – hole in the wall, family run and serving delicious ethnic food.  In Manna’s case the food is Korean and this little restaurant is a welcome addition to our lunch and dinner rotation.

Since it is summer, Ria and I are back in full-on food adventure mode, we decided to check out Manna for lunch.  The hubby was working from home, so we let him “crash” our food ‘venture.  Weekday lunch specials are something Ria and I do by ourselves, and excluding him would have been something “mean girls do” (even though I was tempted).  More people means more dishes can be ordered.   After much indecision and back and forth, we settled on sweet and spicy chicken wings (the Koreans have wing-frying down!), vegetarian BiBimBap and chicken bulgogi.

For some of us, the banchan (refers to small dishes of food served along with cooked rice in Korean cuisine) such as kimchi, bean sprouts with sesame oil and spicy fishcake (a favorite of Ria’s) are almost as exciting at the main course.  Ria loved digging in with her chopsticks while chattering non-stop about how good she is with chopsticks and rattling off names of friends who are possibly as good as she is with chopsticks (she isn’t even that good).  It was mildly amusing, but eventually all that talking really slows down the eating.  She is increasingly adventurous with the food she tries, but she just needs to speed up her food consumption, and the world will be a much better place for everyone.

Too many things of the menu were left un-tried and we will be back very soon to check out the kimchi fried rice, the Dakdoritang (chicken stew with mixed vegetables in spicy sauce) and soft tofu soup.  And next time, I want my own bowl of BiBimBop.  The boy who crashed our food adventure,  is terrible at sharing!!