Midtown Lunch

Koreatown, the buzzing stretch of bars and restaurants on 32nd between 5th & 6th, packs a lot of venues into one street. With such limited space, competition is fierce, especially among restaurants that serve similar food. For quite some time, Mandoo Bar, has served as the sole Korean dumpling specialists in K-town, but not for long. As we reported earlier, Daheen Wang Mandoo, a dumpling chain from South Korea, is scheduled to open in October. But we didn’t realize that they would be opening right next to Mandoo Bar. Sure, it could be a coincidence, but I like to think that this is a ballsy move to steal some of Mandoo Bar’s fire. Although their product isn’t perfectly fungible – Mandoo bar focuses on boiled and fried dumplings while Daheen focuses solely on steamed mandoo – given how cheap and awesome Daheen’s dumplings are, my money’s with them.