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Craving Korean Food? Head to North Park, Yelp Data Says

By Kyla Gardner | March 16, 2015 9:49am
 Korean BBQ House, 3315 W. Bryn Mawr Ave., is just one of many Korean restaurants in the North Park neighborhood.
Korean BBQ House
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NORTH PARK — North Park is the place in the city for Korean food, data shows.

DNAinfo Chicago asked review site Yelp to crunch the numbers on what type of cuisine is offered more frequently in each neighborhood compared to the rest of the city. (The numbers don't correlate to the most popular food — it would end up just being pizza, burgers and fast food.)

For example, Edgewater has a higher ratio of Thai restaurants than the rest of the city, and Hyde Park's features disproportionately more vegan restaurants.

In North Park, it's Korean food, with a ratio of 40 times more Korean restaurants in the neighborhood than the city's average.

Restaurant owner Choon Ja Lee lives in Skokie, but decided to open her restaurant Korean BBQ House at 3315 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.

"This is a Korean town," she said, adding that she also chose the neighborhood because of its family-friendly feel.

North Park is home to the Korean-American Chamber of Commerce at at 5601 N. Spaulding Ave.

Lee cooks Bulgogi — a traditional Korean dish with marinated beef — and variations on the dish on a gas grill in the center of the diners' table.

Lee immigrated to the U.S. 25 years ago, and had the special cooking equipment for Korean BBQ House shipped to Chicago from South Korea, she said.

"It's a pretty authentic, traditional barbecue meal," said Lee's daughter, Magnolia, 29.

Lee and her daughter say the clientele ranges from people who have never had a communal table-fired meal before to people who lived abroad in Korea and crave the taste again.

"It's interesting, there's extreme amounts of diversity and eclecticness," Magnolia said. "This is what America looks like, and I'm proud to say that."

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