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Fearless Critic restaurant review
Austin
This restaurant is closed
Food
Feel
Price
9.2
5.5
$10
Korean
Counter service

Hours
Sun–Thu 10:00am–9:00pm
Fri–Sat 9:00am–10:00pm

Bar None
Credit cards None

Highland Mall
6929 Airport Blvd.
Austin, TX
(512) 467-1916
New Oriental Market
A magical soupateria in—where else?—a Korean grocery

Within spitting distance of Han Yang market, which houses the dismally outfitted but very good Manna, is another great Korean soup lord, New Oriental Market. The grocery is a tad smaller, with a slightly more tolerable intestine smell to it. Past a tunnel of apparently copied Korean-language VHS tapes and DVDs is a cloister of tables and chairs, several of which are claimed by older Korean gentlemen hunched over stews. In one, a skinny tentacle reaches out of soft tofu as other creatures of the deep bob in the chili-pepper-red broth around it: itty-bitty mussels, scallops, and something resembling a limpet. The funky seafood flavor is not assertive, nor lost. In another, more marrow-rich broth, gingery pork-stuffed mandoo (dumplings) join that wonderfully gummy gateway to other oral fixations, dduk (rice-flour cakes).

Banchan dishes are minimal, but the kimchi is reliable. Galbi is cut thin on the bone and so sweet and charred that we crave it for days afterward. There’s also a watery sweet rice milk free for dessert, wonderful hen soup on weekends (it’s huge), and lamb bone, pork bone, and beef bone soups. Your number will be called out first in Korean, then English—happily, no signs of further Anglicization are present. No healthy conceits, no gluten-free menu, and no one-dollar sushi.