"Don't be distracted by the tented stalls outside the 24-hour HanYang Mart in Flushing, Queens, with their promises of baked eggs and potato pancakes shaped like hearts. There will be time for them.
Go in, past the stacks of 15-pound bags of rice and the clothing nook. (If you've reached the counter selling deli manjoo, little spongecake fish with guts of sweet cream, you've gone too far.) Stop at the sign that says HanYang BunSik in Korean, with an English subtitle: Snack Corner.
The name is literal. The restaurant, which started 14 years ago as just another tented stall, now occupies a proper corner of the market. Tables are placed efficiently back to back, with benches that fit three people to a side, provided they're feeling friendly. Dishes fall under the Korean category of bunsik, or snacks, although many are more substantial than snacks in the Western definition, a reminder of how far we lag behind other cultures in this culinary genre.
Kimchi-and-beef dumplings arrive on plastic foam, under plastic wrap, as if from a 7-Eleven. They are potent nevertheless, as is the similarly packaged soondae, a dark sausage of ground beef and pork in a shiny casing that suggest the skin of a Goth balloon. There's a hint of pork blood seeping through, its moody tang offset by embedded grains of sticky rice.
From the April 30, 2015, New York Times article "At HanYang Bunsik, Snacking is Encouraged," by Ligaya Mishan.
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