Jajangmyeon

It’s listed on the menu as “noodle with fresh black bean sauce,” which tells a newbie to Da Rae Won next to nothing. The dish is the Korean equivalent of pizza in America: It’s comfort food. It’s delivery food. It’s food borrowed from another country. Adapted from a Chinese dish, jajangmyeon is little more than noodles covered with a fermented, caramelized black-bean sauce. But at Da Rae Won, chef Hyeong Mu Choe prepares the noodles fresh for every bowl. How do you know? You can hear him thwacking the dough against the counter, hard and authoritatively. The dish hits your palate in much the same way.