Tiny New York Kitchen Goes To Koreatown
Last week Tiny New York Kitchen took a little trip to NYC’s Koreatown. I had a west coast girlfriend come into town and was thinking of things to do and hadn’t been to Koreatown (West 32nd Street) for quite a while and figured that it was about time to pay my respects. First we went for Korean barbeque at my favorite place, Wonjo. I made sure that we got there a bit early to beat the inevitable rush. We had delicious marinated meat that was cooked on the table grill. We had the usual sides of kimchee, tofu, little dried fish and all sorts of things that were quite interesting. I also ordered fish stew and a side order of vegetable tempura. Everything was delicious and what was not eaten was brought home for the next day’s lunch.
After making our way through the waiting crowd we finally left Wonjo stuffed. Being stuffed didn’t stop us from walking a few doors down to the Korean bakery, Paris Baguette. Don’t ask me why in the hell it’s called Paris Baguette because it’s a cafeteria style Korean bakery. We picked up our cafeteria trays and giant metal tongs and helped ourselves to a strange, but delicious, array of desserts. The place was packed with mostly Korean people doing the same thing. We got in line, paid and took them to go because we had one more place to go.
At this point it was about 9:30pm and our final stop was, Zen Spa, a 24 hour Korean spa that was cheap and bizarre to say the least. I had been to two other 24 hour Korean spas before and just found out that one of them is a gay sex place so I crossed that one off the list. We showed up at the “spa” and the place wasn’t very busy at all. The front end was a nail salon and I was looking around for where the spa part might be. We were shown to the tiny back area where we were given robes to put on and then promptly taken away never to be seen again. We were shoved into a sauna until I was burning up and poked my head out to see what the heck we were doing next. These two short Korean women, wearing matching black sport bra outfits, brought us into a room with two side by side plastic covered massage tables. We were still buck naked and they had us get onto the tables and scrubbed us raw and then threw buckets of water on us. This was the exfoliation treatment. They scrubbed every inch of our bodies and I am NOT exaggerating one iota. The tables were so slippery and we were sliding all over the place. When I was told, “you turn over now,” I swear I was going to go flying across the room. When they were nearing the end of the exfoliation treatment they were slapping our butts like they were spanking us. I don’t know what that was about. They shoved us back into the sauna until I couldn’t take it anymore and popped my head out. We still had no robes or towels and it’s a good thing I’ve known my friend for many many years. My woman says, “You ready now?” I replied that we were ready for our massages. We were taken back into the same wet room and put back onto the same tables where the women were up on the tables massaging us with their knees and elbows. Actually felt pretty good.
Finally the treatment ended with a “facial” of cucumbers and hair washing. The cucumber stuff was weird and didn’t seem to do much, but the hair washing was kind of nice. We laid there and they washed and conditioned our hair with vigorous hands. Then they threw more buckets of warm water over our bodies. The very last thing they had us do was sit up and handed us cat bowls of milk to put our faces into. I don’t know what that was supposed to do either, but I am sure it had some purpose. Finally we were handed a towel each to dry off and get our clothes on. I tipped the ladies quite well and luckily it was a nice evening out as we walked back to my apartment with wet hair at midnight.
