Eat, Drink + Be Merry. Food, Travel, Photography, Design + Music in Los Angeles and Other Parts of the Earth.

in Hawaii! I’m prepared to engorge myself in Hawaii’s good eats. I’ll be back next week to provide a full report. Have a good week.

Genghis Khan. A term that means “universal king”, was given to a young man named Temujin. Temujin was successful in uniting all Mongol Tribes in the year 1202. By the year 1227, Temujin had led the largest allied army in the world, invading Russia, China, Southern Asia and Eastern Europe. Quite a feat for one man. Amidst all the fighting, Genghis Khan must’ve stopped along the road and said, “Man, I’m f*&!king hungry.” Interestingly enough, if it wasn’t for the Mongolians, we wouldn’t have a few favorites within the Asian Culture.

During his reign, he invaded Northeastern Asia, which neighbors Shandong and Korea. Because the Mongolians were almost always on the road tormenting armies and villagers, it was hard to lug a kitchen stadium through the Gobi desert. So what was their oh-so-clever, response? Slap the metal shields over the campfire and grill meat. Thus we have Mongolian BBQ, which I assume led to everyone’s favorite, Korean barbeque. Another interesting fact. Genghis Khan went as far south as Vietnam and carried with him many types of spices. Two of them being cinnamon and star anise. And as we all know, what’s better than having soup in a cold winter after bludgeoning and dismembering a whole army. Soup! The Mongolians would use their helmets as pots and boil soup with their spices. Another assumption that the Vietnamese adapted this recipe to produce another favorite for hungover people, Pho! (Which uses star anise and cinnamon sticks.) Thank you Genghis for heavenly barbeque, shabu-shabu hot-pot and soup!

778 years later, people are still employing the genius cooking methods of Genghis Khan. Well at least the 11 of us were. As well as the owner of the unbelievable Manna Korean BBQ on Olympic Blvd. For $14.99, Manna unleashes a smorgasbord of all-you-can-eat-before-you-puke beef, pork and chicken.

On Friday, we all met up at 8:30 pm and waited a good 45 minutes before being seated. I seriously felt like I was in Asia. A canopy hung over a hall of 300+ carnivores, drinking, laughing and smoking. It was a beautiful scene of barbarianism.

We started off with the essentials: Hite. Lots of it. And let me tell you, the food may be $14.99, but Manna gets you on the alcohol. So drink in moderation. We had 3 grills to ourselves and 3 settings of baan chaan.

As soon as the beer started pouring, we caught eyes on the pink, marbled meat being brought to us. We ordered the kalbi beef, which did not come with bones, and thin-sliced beef (I think it’s ‘cha-dol-peggi’). The kalbi beef isn’t flavored and just tastes bland. Nix to that. The real stuff is the thin-sliced beef. I personally like it because it’s the same cut of beef from Yoshinoya. Only that Yoshinoya probably uses zebra meat. (Joke.) I stared to stuff my face with 5-6 slices of beef at a time, dipping it in the salt/pepper/sesame oil sauce generously.

Gary then told me the better way to eat it. Take the square-cut rice noodle and add beef, lettuce, bean paste and sesame oil. Eat it like a taco. Now that was good looking out. I figured I should trust the guy since he almost ate at Manna 3 times in one week. He’s currently on P.E.T.A.’s most wanted list.

A great joke to play on unsuspecting people is the erroneous birthday song. We picked the weakest, most vulnerable-to-clowning of the pack and told the waitress to sing him a song. Haha. And within 5 minutes, a terrible, Korean-techno version of “Happy Birthday” blared through the Radio Shack speakers. It was awful. And to think, someone ACTUALLY bought this off iTunes for $0.99. Our waitress then came out with a candle and cheap champagne. She lit the candle and shook up the bottle to give some to the birthday boy, but instead, ended up giving one of our other friend, Dan, a nice cheap-champagne bath. The next thing we know, the whole dining hall starts clapping and cheering for him. It was hilarious. Gosh, drunk people consider anything to be entertainment. They might as well have brought out some midgets and balloon-shaping clowns.

After 13 plates of beef, 21 beers and cheap champagne, our bill came out to about $33 a person. Manna is definitely one of the better Korean barbeque buffets. If you’re in Orange County, you can read up on Seoul Garden in Tustin. I think we did some major damage to Manna, as well as our stomachs. I won’t get into the details of the rest of my night, but let’s just say, my body hates me. The original plan was to go bowling. Yeah right. Half of us didn’t even know where the hell we were. We had been so disoriented by the exorbitant intake of beef. Our blood had rushed down to process the intestinal madness going on, leaving us quite comatose. I am not going back to Manna for a good year. The thought of beef is unpleasant right now.

But as we drove back to West LA, I looked up into the heavens, and I saw a helmet-and-axe-bearing, Asian man, smiling and giving me the thumbs up

Genghis Khan: “Good shit, huh?”
Me: “Yeah, good shit.”

Manna Korean BBQ
3377 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
(323) 733-8516

Ever since I moved into West LA, I made it a point to try and meet as many of my neighbors as I could. You know, just in case, I make a little too much noise after a night of partying, they’re less inclined to call the cops. My one neighbor, Luke, is probably the most hilarious and interesting of them all. Born in Michigan, he moved to LA to pursue a career as an actor. How cliché. He and I run into each other at the oddest times, usually late at night. It’s true, the freaks do come out at night. I’ll be smoking outside and he’ll be walking down the street, usually equipped with a trucker hat and unusual, artery-clogging snacks from 7/11 up the street. We often hangout on the curb, drink beers and talk about important things in life: like women. He had been dating a girl from San Diego and told me that their relationship, sadly, only existed through the phone because of a priority conflict. A few weeks ago, he came by and knocked on my door with a serious look.

“Hey man, what’s up?”
“What’s up?”
“So you know that SD girl I was telling you about?”
“Yeah.”
“Well she’s finally coming down to see me and I wanna do something nice for her.”
“Like what?”
“I wanna make her dinner at my place.”
“What’s wrong with the 7/11 hot dogs? Haha.”
“%*$# you. Haha.”
“Let’s do it.”

So he came over later that week and I told him we could do a practice run. She liked chicken so I wanted to pick something tasty, yet easy to cook. I didn’t want him to risk burning down his kitchen. I suggested Prosciutto & Cheese Stuffed Chicken with a White wine, shallot sauce served with grilled asparagus (my favorite) and basmati rice from Trader Joe’s.

Most people have a fear in using chicken breasts because of its tendency to taste dry and bland. But if it’s seared in a pan and thrown in the oven, it’s super tender and flavorful. I don’t suggest pan-frying chicken breasts, but if you do, cut them in half so that you get two thin pieces of breast meat. Cut a slit on the side of the breast and stuff it with two pieces of prosciutto and one slice of provolone cheese. Salt and pepper both sides and sear them in a skillet. (Go easy on the salt, the prosciutto and cheese have plenty of sodium as it is.) As soon as it’s browned, flip the breasts and throw it in the oven. 375 degrees for about 15-20 minutes, and once it’s done, let it sit outside so that the juices are re-distributed.

For the sauce, deglaze the skillet with any kind of white wine and scrape up the flavored bits from the chicken. Add some shallots and butter (garlic if you like), and let the sauce reduce. If you’re impatient like me, just add some flour and use a whisk to dissolve the flour. Add sugar if the sauce is too sour. This dish took no more than an hour to prepare and was pretty good. Most of all, Luke was able to pick it up pretty quickly. Not only did I get free food, I got a six pack for helping him out. I’d say that’s a fair trade.

A few days later, I saw Luke.

“So, how’d it go?”
“It went well.”
“She didn’t throw up right?”
“Naw.”
“So you guys had a good time?”
“Yeah we did.”
“So when did she leave?”
A smile quickly formed on his face.
“The next morning.”
“Nice.”

I nearly shed a tear in joy.