Update: as of February 2024, Palpal has permanently closed.
Don't Waste Your Time And Money
TLDR: Palpal is a popular restaurant on the edge of K-town that serves up casual, less-traditional Korean food. Unfortunately, the twists it puts on familiar favorites makes you miss those favorites rather than appreciate what you’ve got. While you can certainly have a good meal here, I would look elsewhere for exciting Korean food.
Image credit: theinfatuation.com
There’s something about a picture menu that screams “fast food”. At the same time, there’s something about minimalist concrete in a Korean restaurant that tells you you’re in for “modern, small plate, fancy”. So what to make of a restaurant that tries to do both?
Palpal is trying to answer that question. Following its successful fine dining forebears (Atoboy, Little Mad), Palpal has a familiar feel of a “new age” Korean restaurant. However, its menu is both significantly cheaper and includes many more classic dishes with only minor modifications. The result is a kind of twilight zone of wanting the meal to balance more toward traditional or more toward innovative dishes.
Take the fresh kimchi, which is more of a cabbage salad than kimchi. Although it tasted good, I missed its classic fermented relative on the table. It seemed over-engineered to be different for the sake of being “cool” and “new”. On the other hand, the black bean noodles (which were quite delicious) were straight out of your favorite takeout spot. Nothing new to celebrate here, just good old noodles doin’ their thing.
I did in fact like the food. The service was disorganized but that’s not a nail in the coffin. Why skip this place? Simple answer: you can do better. If you want something innovative, there are at least 5 modern Korean restaurants at a multitude of price points I can think of that do it better. And if you want the classics, I can think of another 5 that do those better too (stick around for future reviews!).
Regrettably, Palpal sits in a no man's land; not novel enough to seek out and not perfected enough to crave.However, it is affordable, and if you just want a quick tasty noodle for takeout, Palpal could be a good choice.
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