Anjin

I know the last couple posts were half assed/not about food, but not to worry. My computer is back up and running, and I'm back on track.

A few weeks ago, I met with my cousins in Costa Mesa to try a place called Anjin. Yelp users warned that there would be a wait, and indeed there was. We arrived at 6, and there were about 15 parties already ahead of us on the list. But we were going to wait it out. The nice thing is that you can write your phone number down, and they will call you when your table is ready. So we went next door to Hashigo Korean Kitchen for their $9 Kirin Pitchers, which is a good deal, plus I love Kirin on tap. We didn't order any food, but I saw that they offered Korean tacos. When I asked them about it, they told me they had just put that on the menu, which made me think they got it from Kogi. I wanted to try it, but we just waited it out for dinner. 3 pitchers and 1.5 hours later, I got the call that our table was ready.

Sounds just like Gyu-Kaku, but they have gas grills, instead of charcoal.


Our table was set up with our utensils and what not along with two sauces: peanut and some kind of sweet soy sauce base thingy. There was also a small container of minced garlic that you could add to your sauce.


Having had our fill with beer, we ordered some large house sakes that came in a nifty bottle.


Kimchi combo of cucumber, radish and cabbage. A must have for us to eat along with our meat! While the cucumber slices were a bit too salty for me, I really did enjoy the rest, and we ended up getting one more order of this later on.

Some of the pictures came out funky. I was messing w/ the settings/was more buzzed than I thought I was. The place is a quality over quantity place when it comes to their meat, so be prepared to take a hit in your wallet. (Although in our case, my cousins ended up getting dinner for us. Thanks again!)

Either the short rib or rib eye...


Whatever the top one was not.


Pork Belly.


Bacon wrapped asparagus.


Medium sized scallops. Only thing that we got that I thought was just ok.


Best deal of the night: spare rib soup for $6.50. They nicely bowled out 5 portions of this out for us, and I must say that it was a pretty good amount for your money, considering that the place is pretty pricey. The soup had a very rich beefy and somewhat spicy broth filled with an assortment of little goodies to enjoy.


The star of the night: beef tongue. Delicious. I think we ended up getting 4 orders of this. I read several complaints about how the tongue was sliced too thin, but I liked it just fine. They give you a little bowl of this lemon sauce to dip the tongue in, and you really don't need much more than that.


A Mild pineapple sherbet.


I forget what this was called...some kind of ice cream w/ red bean.

Tea was served at the end of our meal as a cleanser.

What I liked about Anjin was that some vegetables (corn, bell pepper, onions) came out w/ each order of meat, whereas at Gyu Kaku, you have to pay for that separately. Rice is 2 bucks a bowl here, but the portion size you get feeds two people. The downside was their ventillation system. At one point, the smoke was blowing directly into my face. They told me it was on, but something was wrong w/ the damn thing. It stopped after a while though.

Service was great: very friendly and prompt. The place itself is small, so like I said before, either come early or prepare for a wait.

3033 Bristol St
Costa Mesa, CA 92626