Fiending for Feng Mao
Shortly after pig’s head dinner at the Gorbals, I started wondering what bizarre food could I eat next. Feng Mao is often tittered about because they serve bull’s penis. Yeah, I know.
green onion pancake
Considering I couldn’t get people interested in cow lips, they weren’t going for the um, bull’s personality as my buddy Trippy Food would say (check out his post about eating pho with bull’s personality). We safely ordered lamb, beef, beef belly, chicken, chicken wings, chicken gizzards and chicken hearts. Oh, and some big ass mushrooms. Along with onion pancakes, plenty of beer and soju, we were all set to tackle it all. And we didn’t even order any of the cooked “homestyle village” dishes. We wanted to grill and grill we did.
banchan
Owned by a Chinese couple, Feng Mao serves Northern Chinese food in Koreatown. There are Korean elements such as a wide(r) array of banchan. Some Mandarin restaurants serves only peanuts and lightly marinated vegetables but Koreans tend to think no meal is complete without some banchan. So we also had kimchi, mung bean sprouts, seaweed, egg custard and my favorite Korean jelly along with salad.
egg custard
Feng Mao’s banchan may not be super exciting but it was appreciated. The steaming hot egg custard was perfect for the cold night.
lamb
We started off with 10 skewers each of lamb and beef. You are seated around a table and the DIY grill wasn’t much DIY as someone often came to turn over the kebabs for us. The pieces are cut small so everything cooked quickly. I dipped almost all my food in the special spice mixture though the well-spiced lamb didn’t really need it.
chicken hearts
chicken gizzards
Hearts and gizzards weren’t met with much enthusiasm when I ordered them (this group also suffered through my raw beef mania a few months back when we had Ethiopian at Addis) but it turned out the chicken hearts were the tastiest.
All in all, we had a wonderful time and were stuffed beyond belief. We left a few skewers of beef belly and one lone chicken wing to turn to a crisp on the double-decker grill.
And here is Dishing Up Delights’ review of Feng Mao.
Feng Mao
414 S Western AveLos Angeles, CA 90020
(213) 388-9299
Ms. Minty,
The skewers look mighty tasty – I think you’ll just have to plan a return trip and I’ll tag along and let you try a bite of “bull personality”!
Val
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I’ll let you know if I return. It’s so hard for me to go back frequently to places with all these restaurants I’ve never been to. Someone asked me how long I wanted to go to Feng Mao and probably since I read JGold’s article 1.5 years ago!
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Chicken hearts! One of my most memorable (not the tastiest, however) meals I had in China was at a N. Korean BBQ place in Changchun where I gobbled up skewers of chicken hearts and chased it with copious amounts of beer.
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I had chicken hearts not too long ago and found it a bit chewy. At Feng Mao, it was actually tender and quite tasty. That’s too bad it wasn’t good in China.
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It was also pretty chewy in China. There was some good flavor, but the texture was just off. Also, I am now craving green onion pancakes. I should keep some of the frozen ones here at work.
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aww I’m bummed you didn’t try the penis, but godo work on the hearts and gizzards. Looks delicious!
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ha! but I ended up having bull’s penis soup a few days later…oh boy…that post is coming soon.
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