Week in Reviews

Eating (or fearing) blowfish isn't just a Japanese thing, as Jonathan Gold explains at Koreatown's Dae Bok: "So after you persuade the waitress that what you really want is blowfish instead of monkfish, after you have pronounced the words bok jiri a half-dozen times to the best of your ability, puffed out your cheeks, and pointed to the line drawing of the blowfish printed on the chopstick wrapper, you may actually be rewarded with the blowfish stew...It is a pleasant thing, to sit around a seething cauldron at Dae Bok, sipping Korean black-raspberry wine, spooning broth and vegetables into your bowl, fishing out meaty pieces of blowfish that slip right off the curious V-shaped skeleton like a chicken thigh off its bone...If you’ve worked it right, you’re full, a little drunk and you’ve survived another day." [LAW]