Tommy Washbush
The exterior of Cafe MiMi.
An umbrella shades Cafe MiMi’s one outdoor table.
Cafe MiMi is Korean street food meets comfort food, served where Allen Street meets Regent Street. It’s basically a stationary food cart. The food is fun and fine — “humble,” you might say, in homage to the pie shop by that name that once occupied the space.
Owner Youngeun Cho maximized her prep area by closing the interior to customers and creating an ordering window. Takeout is the only option unless you nab one of the several chairs under the bright sun umbrella in front of the cafe. If that’s the way you go, and on a sunny day it makes for a pleasant interlude, you may share the space with strangers or neighbors and trade notes about menu items, and leave feeling better about life.
Start with an order of glass noodle seaweed roll from the “grab and go snacks” section of the menu. These are lightly tempura-battered and fried nuggets of transparent glass noodles wrapped in seaweed, a little bigger than a Tater Tot. Mild, with a slight briny tang from the seaweed and a salty crunch from the batter, the order of five comes with a packet of soy sauce that’s not really necessary. I have found these curiously addictive (a word I don’t like to use in food writing but how else to explain why I end up eating all of them in the car while driving home with the takeout?). These pair well with a sweet peach popping boba tea (canned, and sold at the cafe) on a hot day.
Tteokbokki, chewy rice cakes, arrive in a hot (temperature-wise) red soup of sweet-spicy gochujang-inspired sauce. It’s zippy and there’s plenty to use for dipping other tidbits, like the tempura-battered sweet potatoes, made with Korean sweet potatoes — yellow, and drier than the common orange American sweet potato.
Shareable, or the perfect size for lunch, is the kimbap, a Korean rice and seaweed roll that comes neatly prepared with carrots in a fine julienne, a wee bit of savoy cabbage, Korean pickled radish, cucumber, and a nibble of imitation crab in addition to your choice of a variety of proteins — classic (ham), beef bulgogi, tofu, spicy pork, spicy fish cake, or tuna. While I liked the beef bulgogi and the spicy pork (a not-too-spicy sausage), I’d go straight to the tuna — a creamy tuna salad that marries well with the other ingredients for a tart/salty/sweet trifecta.
The mandu (dumplings) come steamed or baked; the filling of minced pork, glass noodles and chives is mild and meaty, not greasy.
The combo — one kimbap, three mandu and two seaweed rolls, plus an 8-ounce dish of tteokbokki — is a fair sampling of the shop’s menu and a crash course in Korean street food.
Heftier options include the sweet and tangy chicken tenders, three large white meat tenders battered and fried and glazed with a zingy tomato-based sweet/sour sauce.
The “crispy man corn dog” comes with a fried batter studded with small squares of potatoes, sprinkled with sugar, and drizzled prettily with squiggles of ketchup and mustard; inside, the “hot dog” is half melted cheese, half a pale, mild sausage. I’ve had Korean corn dogs at Glazed and Teamoji, and this was the least satisfying — the hot dog didn’t have enough flavor to balance all the dough, leaving ketchup and mustard to carry the day.
I loved the japchae, a stir-fried tangle of thin glass noodles in a soy/toasted sesame oil sauce, with strips of red and yellow pepper and shiitake mushrooms, but it could use more peppers. The shiitakes are outstanding, meaty and full of umami, and I would happily have a few more of those, too.
Cafe MiMi is only open 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. and 3:30-5:30 p.m. weekdays, and can get a little backed up if there’s a line — and there may be, at peak dining hours. If you’re in a rush, there’s online ordering. Wednesday night features a more substantial dinner-to-go special.
The cafe makes a sweet addition to this corner, which is experiencing a renaissance with the recent addition of a Cafe Domestique and GlouGlou wine bar on Allen Street on the other side of Regent.
One thing about reviewing a restaurant. Sometimes when I sit down to write, I think, “Well, that’s over.” In writing this, I thought only of when I could next squeeze in a trip to Cafe MiMi.
Cafe MiMi
10 S. Allen St.
11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. and 3:30-5:30 p.m. Mon.-Fri.
mimicafestore.com
$4-$12
Tommy Washbush
The spicy pork kimbap at Cafe MiMi.
The kimbap is a generous roll; this is the spicy pork.
