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Arcadia is full of good Chinese restaurants, but surprisingly, it has a pretty good Korean one, too. Young Dong Garden is hardly a hole in the wall, but located on busy Huntington Drive, many miss this place. You know you found a good Korean restaurant when as you walk from the parking lot to the entrance, you are welcomed by the aroma of barbeque beef. Once inside, you find relaxed diners contrasting the hustle and bustle of speeding cars outside.

Once seated, we were immediately served a small salad while we looked over the menu. The salad is very plain, just lettuce and dressing, but it was still nice to have something to snack on while contemplating what to order. Right after we placed our order, servers came by with a bean-based pancake and an assortment of cold side dishes, including kimchi, seaweed, and cucumbers. Each and every single one was quite enjoyable. From the moment we first sat down, we constantly had food on our table, but we were never given anything that would fill us up.

The actual entrees we ordered were the ribs soup with glass noodles ($9.99) and tofu stew with beef ($8.31). The soup looked rather plain, but appearances can be deceiving. The rib meat was good, though there were a couple of fatty pieces. My favorite part of the dish, however, was the actual broth. It had captured the full flavor of the ribs and was absolutely delicious. The tofu stew was no different than those you would find at other good Korean restaurants. The beef in it was nothing to write home about either. So why order this? There’s just something very comforting about piping hot tofu stew with rice. Especially with the cold weather and rain outside, both dishes were perfectly soothing. I will definitely be going back to try the bibimbap another time, perhaps when the weather is fairer.

Young Dong Garden
19 W. Huntington Drive
Arcadia, CA 91007
(626) 698-6198

By Pauline (see more of her posts).