Increasingly, you have to travel farther and farther outside of Seattle for the best of the Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines. 20 minutes south of the city in the otherwise undistinguished suburb of Federal Way is one of our favorite Korean joints.

The marinated BBQ meats come ready to take on their beautiful char at tabletop grills, and there’s a great variety of banchan. Other standouts are the delicious seafood pancake (not too greasy, although you should skip the overly chewy octopus version) and the grilled mackerel, which is oily and delicious, with that full-flavored (some might say “fishy”) stank, its skin on and nicely crisped. The bulgogi and kalbi are also consistently good.

Mirak is another Asian restaurant with bare-bones décor, this time of the anemic pastel variety. The restaurant is divided in half: the tables on the right side are outfitted with grills, but the tables on left are not, so at least one section of the restaurant is relatively smoke-free. Service is usually pretty slow, which is problematic because the place is often very busy.