Wrapper's delight

plus a pork bone stew you never knew you needed

Hello, everyone!

Thanks for hanging in there while I took a quick break.

The first anniversary of my dad’s passing happened (which still feels surreal), and we wanted to make sure my mom was surrounded by love. We took her to her first fine dining experience ever at Jeong, which we thought was an appropriate place to start, since it blends Korean flavors and ingredients she’s familiar with, along with techniques and dishes she’d never had before.

Dave and Jen (who are friends of ours), treated mom with love, and we couldn’t have asked for better hosts. Jeong is a special place, so I highly recommend it if you’ve got a special occasion to celebrate.

We’re sporting a theme today, because today’s restaurant spotlight is another Korean place, but one that serves traditional dishes. (You know we love our Korean food.) The reason why I picked this particular spot is because I’m part of an AAPI Facebook group, and a member of the group recently posted this message:

please support this family business in Morton Grove if you live in the Northwest suburbs or have access to a car in Chicago. my mom is a waitress here and I would love to see the restaurant do well, they’re actually so tasty and affordable but people just don’t know about them!!

The Bat-Signal here caught my attention.

Either this was just a friendly “hey, come see my mom at work,” or it could be a, “my mom’s employer needs some business.” That being said, this is actually a restaurant I’ve been to before, and it’s been around for years now. The place does serve Korean barbecue, but it actually specializes in a few Korean dishes that aren’t barbecue at all (sort of like Jang Choong Dong).

Before I go onto the reveal, I also want to note that today’s is supposed to be on the paid schedule. The idea of shining a spotlight on an independent restaurant that might need love, then tossing it behind a paywall, doesn’t sit well with me. So I’m making today’s edition free for all to read.

That being said, The Party Cut sorta barely scrapes by, so if you can support it (every other alternate one’s usually behind the paywall), you’ll help keep this thing going:

So we’re taking a short trek to a strip mall to visit Halmae Bossam up in Morton Grove.

This is one of those Korean restaurants that is hard to identify from the signage, because its name isn’t written in English (and not everyone can read Korean).

But the window does display the name in English, so you know you’re at the right place. There’s some funny business with the hours posted online; the website says the restaurant opens at 5 p.m., but Google says 4. The door of the restaurant also curiously says 5 p.m. on it.

Google, however, is correct. We went at 4 p.m., and as we were sitting in the car trying to figure out what to believe, an employee came out front with a pair of scissors and proceeded to try and scrape off the 5 p.m. marking on the door. She laughed when she saw our confusion and ushered us right in.

I don’t remember exactly what year I’d been to Halmae Bossam in the past, but it did not look like this back then.

I recall it looking much less modern (okay, maybe a bit dingy), which leads me to believe it might have new owners since the last time I visited. My pal David Hammond wrote about Halmae Bossam for the Chicago Tribune back in 2017, while my friend Mike Sula also wrote about it even further back in 2014.

Half of the menu is dedicated to standard barbecue, like kalbi (shortribs) and samgyupsal (pork belly), but we were actually there for the restaurant’s namesake dish, the bossam, which are pork belly (or shoulder) wraps that you assemble at the table. I also remembered that Halmae Bossam specializes in gamjatang, which is a pork bone stew with potato.

So we ordered those two things, along with a side of steamed egg, and when I tried tacking on one single barbecue dish just for the hell of it, the server wouldn’t let me. She said, “No! That’s too much! Next time!” (You can always count on Korean women to keep shit real.)

They keep it relatively easy with the banchan here, but I’m guessing it’s also because we ordered bossam and not barbecue.

So we got a few traditional dishes to nibble on like soy-marinated peppers and onions, a salad, pickled radish, and some kimchi.

The steamed egg, also known as gyeran-jjim ($5), was always one of my favorite things to eat while growing up.

That’s because it’s incredibly light and fluffy, thanks to the steaming process, and if you ever see it on a Korean menu, it’s always worth getting. The egg texture is sort of a mix between custard and scrambled, and make sure you get a few ripping hot spoonfuls right away, because over time the eggs will naturally deflate.

Don’t let the price of the bossam plate ($40) deter you, because this is a hilariously massive amount of food.

It comes with lightly pickled cabbage pieces, tender, thinly sliced pork belly, a spicy radish salad, raw garlic, and slices of raw jalapeño.

There’s also two sauces on the side; the one on the left is shrimp paste (saeu-jeot), and the one on the right is ssamjang (a fermented soybean paste dipping sauce).

You start with a base of cabbage, add pork, and just add whatever you want on top, like the radish salad, either or both of the sauces, and/or the raw veggies.

There’s no right or wrong way to build a bundle, because after all, you’re the one who’s going to be eating it.

You will, however, want to house the whole thing in one mouthful, because Korean wraps are meant to be eaten all at once.

Bossam is a fun and interactive bite to eat, and it’s the kind of food you crush while you’re out drinking, though Davida and I weren’t exactly out tearin’ shit up in wild Morton Grove at 4 p.m. The pork belly here almost melts away to the touch, while the accompaniments add strong savory flavors to balance out the richness of the fatty meat.

Sometimes bossam is served with raw oysters as a topping, but Halmae doesn’t serve them that way. I asked our server why, and she said it was just out of a food safety precaution.

The gamjatang ($15), or pork bone and potato stew, is an absolute must-order.

Even though the broth has a reddish tint to it, it’s only very slightly spicy, if at all. And while the word “gamja” means potato, there’s only one potato in a serving — the bone-in pork is the main bulk of the stew.

Meat connected to bone can be really chewy unless it’s been cooked for a long time, but this soup has clearly been tended to carefully, because the pork falls apart with no resistance.

And man, that broth. I have never, ever, seen Davida so entranced by anything. It is full of gelatin from the meat, making it richly bodied, and that combination of black pepper and perilla seed on top leaves you with a slightly mouth-tingling sensation. $15 is a steal for something this hearty, and I recall enjoying it here ages ago, but not to this extent. Now I’m wishing we lived 10 minutes closer.

The gamjatang isn’t to be missed, so be sure to get an order when you visit. If you don’t, I think Davida might actually show up to your table and force you to get some.

Our server did randomly bring out a plate of galbi bits from the back while we were eating, which was nice of her.

I think it was just because they had some trim laying around from someone else’s order; I can’t imagine this is standard banchan here. Koreans don’t like waste, so I think the idea was more like, someone might as well enjoy it. And of course we did, chewy fatty bits and all, nicely sweetened by the marinade.

But it turns out our server was right. If we’d ordered any barbecue dishes, we’d have been absolutely hosed, since it was just me and Davida. Every other table that was present had only ordered barbecue, but I think it’s valuable for you to know about other dishes that don’t get nearly as much mention when it comes to Korean food. And bossam is particularly fun when you eat it with a group of people, since it’s such a tactile activity.

I am glad I got that reminder to go visit Halmae Bossam, since I’d all but forgotten about the place. Sometimes you need someone to remind you of a restaurant you knew you liked way back when. I’m glad to see it’s still there with food that’s as terrific as ever, but places like this don’t stick around unless you go visit. Just make sure to do it sooner rather than later.

Halmae Bossam
9412 Waukegan Rd
Morton Grove, IL 60053
(847) 470-1914

Hours:
Closed Mondays
Tuesday - Sunday: 4 p.m. - 10 p.m.

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That’s a cabbage wrap on today, folks — since today’s Party Cut is a freebie, feel free to share this one (and don’t forget to hit the heart button too, supposedly that helps?):

And just a reminder that The Party Cut is built on a reader-funded model. Don’t forget to upgrade your subscription to keep this thing running:

If you go visit Halmae Bossam, let me know what you think. If anything, make sure you at least get the gamjatang for an easy meal; at $15 that’s cheaper than a night out at Applebee’s. Love you guys and talk to you soon — next edition’s for paid readers.