One of our favorite Northside Korean restaurants, Ka Won is no secret: it’s always bustling with regulars cooking pork belly, kalbi, and other marinated meats on tabletop BBQ grills; or, perhaps, tossing seemingly endless supplies of meats and seafood into bubbling pots of spicy broth.

In the mix are always a few folks dutifully chowing their way through the prix-fixe dinner, which is huge, with bulgogi, fish, soup, salads, and, of course, banchan. The banchan, which is a highlight at most of the Northside restaurants, are legendary here: you get about ten starters here ranging from kimchi to anchovies.

Like almost all Asian restaurants outside the city limits, Ka Won is in a strip mall; the interior is a bit worn, but it’s tidy, and it seems that at some point, some effort went in to painting the walls butter yellow and installing a few chandeliers instead of fluorescents. But the most dynamic element of the room is the series of silver vents hovering to catch the smoke rising from the grills. Delicious.