Hungry Crowd is a Korean-American café with more American dishes than Korean — though it’s the Korean dishes that keep leaping off the page, demanding attention.
There’s a kimchi biscuit that would be right at home in a South Carolina breakfast shack, except for the kimchi and maybe the cinnamon butter. Otherwise, cheddar, scallions and gravy … yeah, that’s a classic biscuit with gravy.
The Dirty Fries smack of the Midwest, though adding bulgogi and seared kimchi bring them into another world. And the Loco Moco made with a galbi patty and galbi gravy is a culinary carom shot that goes from Hawaii to Seoul to Toluca Lake. Even the barbecue chicken is done Korean style — which means chicken so crispy-crunchy, you have to be careful not to crack a molar.
With its pleasant street side tables, Hungry Crowd feels like a café in small-town America — which has always been the pleasure of catching a bite in admirably retro Toluca Lake, where I’m never surprised to listen in to a grumbling table of scriptwriters lamenting the miseries of trying to get their writing produced.
In its own funny way, this is still a studio town, an adjunct to the numerous lots nearby. The industry may have changed, but writers will never be weary of lamenting their shabby treatment. Producers eat at Nobu … writers find nourishment at Hungry Crowd.
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There are puns galore, as if the menu were auditioning for a job on Comedy Central. There are “Kale-ing Me Softly,” “We Meat Again,” “Bun Jovi Fans” and “Pasta Las Vista Baby” … all I can say is don’t quit your day job. But then, you can’t eat puns. Then again, you can eat the remarkably quirky mac and cheese made not with kimchi or with bulgogi, but with roasted cauliflower. I’ve never seen cauliflower, roasted or otherwise, in mac and cheese. It’s sui generis — and unexpectedly tasty, too.
You can assemble a brunch here not quite like any other in our brunch-obsessed part of the world. Though there are classics like French toast (made with challah bread), Nutella waffles and a ranch-style feed of fried corn tortillas, black beans, avocado and a pair of eggs sunnyside up, this is also a fine place to go for a morning bibimbap.
I love bibimbap — a crispy rice bowl with carrots, zucchini, shiitake mushrooms and bulgogi (pork, chicken or tofu), topped with a fried egg, and flavored with the spicy complexity of gochujang sauce.
Kimchi fried rice makes for a fine breakfast, too — once again with a sunnyside up egg. Avocado toast comes with bacon or smoked salmon. If you’re one of the (very) few still trying to diet as part of a New Year’s resolution, there’s a kale salad, a black bean quinoa salad, and an arugula salad. All vegan and gluten-free, should that matter to you.
Though there’s a fair amount of small dish overlap between the brunch menu, and the lunch and dinner menu, what doesn’t overlap are the fish, meat and pasta dishes. Though “Kale-ing Me Softly” is a pretty strained pun, “O-Fish-Ally Delicious” takes the crown. But it’s where we find a crunchy soft shell crab sandwich as an option; get it with the french fries, so you have crispy with crispy, for you can never have enough crispy.
The pan-seared scallops come with Brussels sprouts, bacon and an apricot horseradish sauce — which is pleasantly befuddling, for horseradish is not often (maybe never) sweetened. It’s a new flavor.
“We Meat Again” is where you’ll find the galbi-based Loco Moco, the galbi kabob and the galbi burger, along with a bulgogi pot — I prefer the udon noodles to the glass noodles, simply because they have more texture. But if it’s the Korean pasta dish called japchae you crave, glass noodles are the way to go, tossed with assorted vegetables, soy and sesame oil.
For dessert, the chocolate gelato comes with a chocolate brownie and mixed berries. The mango sorbet comes with coconut cake. There are marshmallows on the lemon pie gelato.
If you’ve got 50 pages of notes on your 25-page treatment, marshmallows are much appreciated. We’ve been told there’s always room for Jell-O. But you’ve got to make room for marshmallows, in times of crisis.
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.
Hungry Crowd
- Rating: 2.5 stars
- Address: 10140 Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake
- Information: 818-853-7858; www.eathungrycrowd.com
- Cuisine: Pun-heavy menu — “Bun Jovi Fans,” “Kale-ing Me Softly,” “We Meat Again” — filled with an eclectic assortment of dishes ranging from Loco Moco to a kimchi biscuit and a galbi burger, in a casual café with lots of seating on the street.
- When: Breakfast, lunch and dinner, Tuesday through Sunday
- Details: Beer and wine; reservations helpful
- Prices: About $30 per person
- On the menu: 13 “Eggs-Tra Special” Dishes ($14.50-$20), 12 Appetizers ($7-$15), 9 Salads ($10-$19), 4 “O-Fish-Ally Delicious” Dishes ($19-$28), 9 “Pasta La Vista” Dishes ($14.50-$24), 12 “We Meat Again” Dishes ($16-$28), 5 Desserts ($6.50-$7.50)
- Credit cards: MC, V
- What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional. Worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California.), 2 (A good place to go for a meal. Worth a trip from anywhere in the neighborhood.) 1 (If you’re hungry, and it’s nearby, but don’t get stuck in traffic going.) 0 (Honestly, not worth writing about.)