To see how Koreatown has changed over the years, look at its restaurant menus

It’s hard to look at a restaurant menu without being able to order anything from it, but Tien Nguyen has made it her mission to do exactly that.

Nguyen, a food writer and Los Angeles Public Library creator in residence, has been digging through the library’s archives of restaurant menus, some of which go back to the early 1900’s. She’s specifically focused on the neighborhood we now know as Koreatown, and says tracing the evolution of dishes offered can help us understand its history.

“ L.A.'s Koreatown is a really great example of the ways we can look at menus and see how the neighborhood has changed over time,” she said.

She’s been sharing her research with the public, and will be giving a talk this Saturday at L.A. Central Library’s Taper Auditorium.

How restaurants reflect K-Town’s history

In the early 20th century, Koreatown was mostly known as Wilshire Center. Its Art Deco apartments were freshly built, and landmarks like the Ambassador Hotel were trendy spots for celebrities and dignitaries.

“There's one menu that I remember that is in honor of Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa, and you could see there was a big feast and banquet for them,” Nguyen said. “There were also menus for the king and queen of Greece.”

But soon after, other L.A. neighborhoods became in vogue and Koreatown hit a period of decline, even as high-rise buildings started to go up in the mid-20th century.

Following that, Koreatown started to take shape as into the diverse ethnic enclave it is today. Nguyen ties the changes to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed the United States’ highly restrictive quotas on immigration from certain countries, especially those in Asia.

About the menus

Nguyen told LAist the menu of the Korean restaurant The Prince is one of the best examples of this evolution. The restaurant now offers comfort food favorites like bibim mandu and its signature dakgangjeong. But in the middle of last century, it was known as The Windsor, and offered European continental fare.

The Windsor's food offerings from 1958.

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Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library

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“ It looks like they have great cocktails, they have really great fresh fruit alongside steaks and all sorts of different types of pastas,” Nguyen said. “When I look at those menus, you do have a bit of FOMO, but at the same time, I also am a person of color. So there's also this recognition that maybe I wouldn't have been welcome in some of those spaces as well.”

In the 1990s, the space came under new ownership and became The Prince – a Korean restaurant that still preserves its Old Hollywood charm.

“The thing to get there really is the Korean fried chicken, the tteokbokki – the rice cakes – and the Korean pancakes,” Nguyen said.

Another example which shows the emerging Korean influence of the area comes from the restaurant Beverly Soon Tofu, which opened in 1986. The restaurant’s menu was painted onto gourds, one of which is currently on display at Koreatown’s Pio Pico Branch Library until the end of the month.

Nguyen, who co-authored a cookbook with Beverly Soon Tofu’s founder Monica Lee (not to mention two books written with Kogi’s Roy Choi), said the menu was inspired by Korean countryside decor.

Monica Lee of Beverly Soon Tofu, pictured soon after her restaurant's opening in 1986, along with a letter announcing the opening.

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Kevin Tidmarsh/LAist

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“ These dried gourds were also used as lanterns, so that was her inspiration for wanting to make it look like a menu, because her restaurant at the time was decorated kind of like a countryside restaurant,” she said.

As Korean-Americans settled in what Monica Lee called a sometimes “hot, busy and bothersome” city when she founded her restaurant in 1986, they shaped the neighborhood into the largest Koreatown in the United States – and also shaped the way Americans far and wide eat.

An translation of Beverly Soon Tofu's opening announcement.

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Kevin Tidmarsh/LAist

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“ You go to Trader Joe's, and there's that kimbap that was really popular for so many years,” Nguyen said.

Korean-Americans did this alongside many other immigrant populations that call Koreatown home – many of its strip malls represent cuisines from several different countries.

“What's kind of amazing about that to me is that it is something that feels natural,” Nguyen said. “ Koreatown has a large Oaxacan population, for example. It has a very big Bangladeshi population. And so all these foods, all these cultures, [mingled] together to create a food culture that I think is so distinctly Los Angeles.”

Nguyen also credited Korean restaurants with sourcing fresh ingredients locally – even though they aren’t as celebrated as other Californian restaurants for doing so.

How to attend the talk

Nguyen will give her talk “Menus as Neighborhood Maps: How Los Angeles Restaurant Menus Tell Stories of Community Formation” at 10:30am Saturday, March 14, at the L.A. Central Library’s Taper Auditorium.

You can RSVP here.