Hang Ari's Noodle Soup And The New Hanoori Town Restaurants Are Worth Your Attention

Hang Ari's noodle soup and dumplings with a side dish of cabbage and radish kimchis

I don't know exactly what is happening at Hanoori Town, so I'm looking to stir up interest to help us all figure it out.

New and revamped restaurants are opening in the Catonsville space.  One is a unique hand-cut noodle restaurant opened by folks who own a similar spot in Los Angeles.  Just next door is a restaurant doing sushi, Korean kimbap and Korea's Chinese food -- including the addition of hand-made noodles at the base of our favorite, black bean noodles.

Bottom line:  This is a spectacular find if you like good food.  You can eat for $10-15 a person.  Casual.  Accessible.  Completely kid-friendly, and you can hope for the entertainment of seeing a guy bang out the Chinese noodles.  This is one of those places like R&R Taqueria -- worth your visiting and hopefully worth a run up the media chain.

Let's back up.  I'll tell you what I know, and I hope people will try these places and fill in the details.

Hanoori Town is a space in the same shopping center as H Mart at Rolling Road and Rte 40.  Downstairs, it is a kitchen goods store along with people selling housewares and clothing.  The kitchen store is worth checking out -- especially for bento boxes to pack your lunch.  Upstairs are three restaurants and a tea and doughnut joint.  They're all Korean.

The restaurants have revamped in recent months.  One closed.  It was replaced by Hang Ari, the hand-cut noodle restaurant coming from LA.  One revamped their restaurant and may have recruited a chef from Jang Won in Catonsville.  My first inkling came from Lisbeth of Lisbeth Eats.  She sent me information about Hang Ari and wrote a nice run-down about the Hanoori Town restaurants.

When we visited last month, the whole place seemed changed in an exciting way:

• Bu Du Mak is closest to the window.  They specialize in a cold noodle soup called naeng myun, Korean blood sausage called soon dae, and traditional Korean soups and stews, according to Lisbeth.  We recommend naeng myun, but we haven't tried this yet.
• Chan Mat is facing you as you walk in.  In the past, I think they had been limited to Korean dishes, but they now do Korean foods along with sushi, Korean rolls called kimbap and Korean-Chinese dishes -- including those black bean noodles.
• Hang Ari sit between them.  This is the LA import, specializing in hand-torn noodles that they make in the kitchen.  Most are served in soups variations.

The scene is completely casual.  You order at one of the three counters, pick a table to eat, then go back for your order.  Most of the dishes are under $15, so it's a terrific place to try Korean food -- especially if you might want to explore a few menus at once.

Hang Ari's dumplings

The food is absolutely worth that exploration.  Hang Ari alone is worth a trip from Howard County or Baltimore.  For lunch, we split pork dumplings and a basic soup with hand-torn noodles.  It's one of the best meals that I have eaten recently.  A rich broth filled with thick sheets of noodle, potato, zucchini, green onions, kabucha squash and seaweed.  Each vegetable is cooked perfectly.  The noodles and potatoes are filling.  The thin pieces of squash are slightly sweet.  The onion gives a little bite.

I'm unabashedly hoping that bloggers or critics will  check out Hang Ari because the other soups -- seafood, clam, spicy and other variations -- look like you could fill a table with delicious flavors.  These kal guk su noodles are an absolute find.  Fork tender, but thicker than most noodles.  Like getting great pasta at Cinghale, except you can feast for under $15.  They're unique as far as I know in this area.

And I think Hanoori Town has more.  Chan Mat sports a special cooking station that looks like a place to make noodles for black bean noodles or jajangmyeun.  I've talked these up before at Tian Chinese Cuisine in Ellicott City, which also makes its own noodles.  They're delicious.  They're earthy.  They're not spicy so they're accessible to anyone who likes pasta.

Chat Mat has posted a clipping of a 2006 Sun article by Karen Nitkin about chef Chang Yon Huh making noodles at another restaurant.  It looks to me like Chang is handmaking the noodles here.  You'll know when you hear the bang, bang, bang of jajangmyeun noodles being stretched.  The traditional pair for jajangmyeun is a sweet-and-sour pork dish.  Fried pork, so done right it tastes like an Asian cousin to clam strips.

Red-bean-filled donut holes

Oh heavens!  I almost forgot the donuts!  Go to Hanoori Town for all that food, but leave room for the donuts.  Just to the right when you enter is a little store that I think was selling bubble teas and donuts.  Fried donut holes filled with sweet red bean paste.  Save room, and split an order as you leave.  Two holes was a perfect sweet.

Again, this Hanoori Town lineup seems worthy of the type of food writing scrum that spread the word about Grace Garden in Odenton.  Noodles are accessible to anyone willing to try new food.  The prices make this friendly to families, students, anyone else around.  This weekend, Lisbeth posted her own description of Hang Ari,  complete with photos and descriptions of dishes.

Now, I hope other people could tell us more.  I'm looking at you restaurant writers -- maybe a little reporting here, some interviews?  Any other food bloggers want to weigh in?  Anyone else want to add comments to this post?  Recommended dishes?  Back story about the change?  I am imagining some Korean-American student at UMBC who has worked through these menus with more expertise than me.  How are Chan Mat's noodles?  What did you think about Hang Ari's soups?

If you want to know more about Hang Ari's LA cousin, check out the One More Bite blog and Yelp reviews.   If you want more Lisbeth, check out her blog -- or check out her restaurant opening this winter in Federal Hill.  Lisbeth and her husband are opening The Local Fry.  She posted about it two weeks ago.

Cold Soup For You: Naeng Myun To Remember Next Summer At Bu Du Mak And Other Spots

Naeng myun -- cold buckwheat noodle soup -- at Bu Du Mak in Hanoori Town

I'm out of season, but I can't wait for the summer heat to talk up one of our discoveries of 2014.

One basic Korean dish is a cold buckwheat noodle soup called naeng myun that makes a terrific entry into Korean cuisine or a new frontier for folks who already love the barbecue and tofu soups.

This is part of a series of guest posts by Howard County bloggers.  For local food blogs, check out the HocoBlogs food page.

Lisbeth of the Lisbeth Eats blog was nice enough to talk up naeng myun -- specifically the soup at one of the restaurants in the Hanoori Town food court area down from H Mart in Catonsville.  That's Bu Du Mak, the restaurant just to the left as you walk into the Hanoori Town area and right next to the new Hangari Noodle.  Prices start at $9 for the basic bowls or $12 for samples of two varieties.

Naeng myun is often a great summer food.  But you could follow Lisbeth's advice and eat off-season.  We ordered naeng myun last month with barbecue at Honey Pig, and I'll post about that meal later:

Every summer there are two dishes that I just have to have, Maryland crabs and naeng myun.  And when I say I have to have it, I’m talking multiple times.  Maryland crabs are world famous!  But what in the world is naeng myun?

Naeng myun is a Korean cold buckwheat noodle dish and is typically served in two styles, as Mool Naeng Myun or Bibim Naeng Myun. 

Mool Naeng Myun literally means ‘water cold noodles.’  This version is served in a cold broth made from beef or Dong Chi Mi (white radish water kimchi) and topped with sliced pickled radish, julienne cucumbers, sliced pear, sliced boiled beef brisket and a hard boiled egg.  The soup is often slushy or served with ice cubes.  You adjust the seasoning of the broth with vinegar, Korean style hot mustard or mustard oil before eating.  

Bibim means ‘mixed,’ like in bibimbop. W ith this version the cold buckwheat noodles are topped with the same ingredients, but instead of being served in a cold broth, it is served with a spicy go chu jang, Korean red-pepper-paste-based sauce that you mix together with the noodles.  Sure does sound strange, doesn’t it?  I agree that it does, but it really is quite delicious. 

I mean, who would’ve thought kimchi, a super stinky fermented Korean pickled cabbage, would be so popular and widely accepted around the world. They even offer four different varieties of kimchi on the pickle bar in Whole Foods.  So don’t be afraid to try out naeng myun  no matter how strange it sounds. 

Mool naeng myun

LA Chef Bringing Handmade Noodles To East Coast; First Step: Catonsville's Hanoori Town

An Los Angeles chef is opening his first East Coast location in Catonsville -- and bringing hand-cut noodles, reports Lisbeth of the Lisbeth Eats blog.

Lisbeth and I actually emailed weeks ago, and I overlooked her report about a new restaurant going into the shopping center with H Mart in Catonsville.  Down from the supermarket is a space called Hanoori Town that has three restaurants and a frozen yogurt store upstairs and a housewares store in the basement.

A Korean-Chinese restaurant in Hanoori Town has closed, and a new restaurant specializing in handmade noodles is opening there.  The noodles are kal guk su, a Korean noodle dish served in large bowls of broth.  I don't have full details, but it's exciting enough that folks should know.  I'll update as I learn more.

Here is Lisbeth's full email with a quick description of the restaurants in the Hanoori Town down from H Mart and some news about the new noodle restaurant that is coming:

When you're standing in the parking lot facing Hmart, Hanoori Town is to the right.  There's a Korean food court on top with Korean retail stores (Asian housewares, gifts, beauty products, clothes and bedding) below.  When the place was called Besesto, I think everything was under the same person.  But it was reopened as Hanoori Town under new management about five years ago, and I think each individual shop is sub-leased under one owner. I think the owner wanted to create a space where different ethnicities could come together to shop and eat.  Hanoori means 'Us as one.'

On the top floor there are actually three different restaurants -- two to the left and one facing you as you walk in.  When we went there [in August], I heard that a new restaurant is going into the second space. 

So as you walk in, the first restaurant to the left is Bu Du Mak (closest to the window). They specialise in a cold noodle soup called naeng myun, Korean blood sausage called soon dae, and traditional Korean soups and stews.

The restaurant next to Bu Du Mak was a Korean/Chinese noodle restaurant that specialised in jja jang myun (black bean noodles), jjam ppong (spicy seafood noodle soup) and typical Korean/Chinese dishes like Hanjoonggwan in Ellicott City.  But they are no longer there.  A new kal guk su restaurant is going into that space.  The new chef/owner is famous in LA for his fresh hand pulled noodles and soup, and he's bringing it to the East Coast with his first location in Hanoori Town. I was told that it should be open in roughly late September. 

I love kal guk su  so I'm very much looking forward to checking them out. Kal guk su is well known in the Myung Dong neighborhood of Seoul. 

The restaurant facing you as you walk in is called Chan Mat and they offer all sorts of Korean food, Japanese sushi lunch buffet and I saw new signs for Korean/Chinese cuisine on their wall. I 'm guessing when the Korean/Chinese restaurant in the middle closed, Chan Mat added those items to their menu. 

I like the housewares store and the Korean bedding store in the basement. I got my shabu shabu pot from there and the Korean bedding shop in the back corner has lots of gift items and comfortable blankets, mats and pillows for the house.

Bento Boxes at Hanoori Home Plaza

Bento boxes are great fun if you pack a lunch, and there is now a local source for boxes and the crazy Japanese accessories in the new Hanoori Home Plaza opened in Catonsville.

Bento boxes are little plastic boxes that often come with dividers or little cups to separate your food. You pack lunches with a bunch of little items -- a little meat, some rice, some vegetables, a salad, a sweet, etc. I have had a ball re-packaging our leftovers into lunches. Save some cash. Enjoy good food. Some people even say they lose weight.

You could spend hours reading about bento lunches on blogs like Lunch in a Box or Just Bento. They each give tips about how to pack bento lunches. Lunch in a Box talks often about packing lunches for a toddler. Just Bento has great organization and many tips -- from bento basics to decorative cutting techniques. The coolest photos are complex bentos that look like art, but Biggie on Lunch in a Box emphasizes that she spends 10-15 minutes on a lunch. I pack in boxes, but I don't make anything look like art.

Hanoori Home Plaza opened in the shopping center with H Mart on Rte 40 in Catonsville. It's part of the "Hanoori Town" complex, and it's a Korean "Bed, Bath and Beyond" -- all kinds of kitchen items, appliances, and soft goods like blankets. The kitchen goods are worth checking out for anyone looking for bargains -- knives, plates, bowls, peelers, Lock & Lock brand containers. Mrs. HowChow had her eye on

some stainless steel bowls and chopsticks, and there are tons of decorative tea cups, sake pitchers, and gift sets.

Among Hanoori's bento boxes, Mrs. HowChow saw the box that I love but hadn't found anywhere but Los Angeles. It's a 950 ml box that says "vive" on the bag and "Asvel" on box -- white with three interior pieces and a snap-on top. I fill each section, then cover them with "Press and Seal." It's overkill, but I carry my lunch sideways in a shoulder bag. I can't afford a leak. I bought them originally at a Japanese market in LA, and my friend was nice enough to ship me more when I lost the originals to snapped tops and lunches forgotten in the office fridge. Hanoori sells them for $12, but that pays for itself in a week's lunches. Hanoori sells a bunch of other boxes, including small ones for kids.

Hanoori also sell silicon shapes that people use to separate one dish from anyone. I have cupcake liners from Target, and I'll fill one with sliced vegetables or pickles or something. The Japanese items are precious, and they'd probably be great fun if you were trying to get your kids into the bento program.

One thought: We're unclear if the bento boxes will survive for long in a dishwasher. My favorite box seems to warp slightly even on the upper level, but I use one or two every day so it's such a luxury to throw them in the machine. Consider hand-washing.

If you visit Hanoori Home Plaza, you should also check out the H Mart, my favorite place for food. (Click here for all the H Mart posts.) You'll also see Mangoberry inside Hanoori and Golden Krust for Jamaican takeout down the row. If you're interested in cooking Japanese food, check out my review of Kimiko Barber's cookbooks.

Hanoori Home Plaza

Hanoori Town

822-828 N. Rolling Road

Catonsville, MD 21228

NEAR: Hanoori is in the shopping center with H Mart at Rte 40 and Rolling Road in Catonsville. From Howard County, talke Rte 40 east from Rte 29 and then watch for the Starbucks on the right. Turn there. The "home plaza" is on the lower floor of the Hanoori section. You walk into Hanoori past the Mangoberry, then down the stairs to the Hanoori Home Plaza. Kitchen goods are right at the bottom of the stairs, and bento boxes are on the back side of one of the kitchen goods displays.