Oh Mama! Kitchen

🇰🇷 SOUTH KOREA

📍 14822 Beach Blvd., La Mirada, Southeast Los Angeles

🅿️ Ample parking in plaza.

🥤 No Alcohol.

 

ℹ️ No dine-in service, everything is sold for takeout.

Opened in 2018 and prophetically formatted to survive a global pandemic, Oh Mama! Kitchen was perfect for nearby residents in 2020 and 2021 who could not enjoy restaurants. At first the small place had a couple tables for people to enjoy their homemade creations immediately, but these spaces turned into areas for staff to expand and prepare a greater amount of food to take home, as well as more refrigerators to keep all of these treasures.

Literal steps away from Orange County in a little corner nook of La Mirada, the takeout foods prepared daily are convenient for those coming from Buena Park, Cerritos, and Fullerton, as well as the hills to the north. It usually has a couple customers coming and going, but trips here are quick and painless, except maybe for your bank account as you keep adding boxes from each fridge to your order.

New prep areas where tables once lived.

The kimbap (below) seems to have the place of most prominence in the small shop, what is left for the day is displayed right as you walk in. If you come after the lunch rush, the shelf is likely to look a bit bare as it does here, but make sure to take at least one of these home as it is somewhat of a specialty of the shop.

There are traditional and modern options, and all of these are in the $6 to $9 range, enough for a light lunch or a delicious appetizer to a bigger meal. Both the bulgogi and anchovy versions sampled on this first visit were delightful.

The other thing the shop seems to specialize in is quality ban chan (above and photos below), none of which is cheaply made for mass production like you sometimes see at supermarkets. There are refrigerated cases along just about every wall surface of the shop, with way too many options to take in one go. Oh Mama! Kitchen also has a row of about a dozen Korean stews available, including the wonderful yukgaejang ($10, below).

This consists of shredded beef and vegetables in a spicy red broth that is full of scallion aroma. All of the beef, bean sprouts, and taro stems are decidedly long and are more easily picked up with chopsticks than a standard Korean soup spoon. In a restaurant you will see this served with dangmyeon, noodles made from sweet potato, but since this is made for takeout, either buy those or some of the purple rice they offer on the side.

육개장 Yukgaejang with white rice made at home.

어묵 볶음 Eomuk bokkeum, spicy stir-fried fish cake ($10).

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