Dining Review: Seoul Providence

Garlic noodles. Photography by Angel Tucker

Seoul Providence is a sprawl of a restaurant in brick and black paint, sitting center stage in Davol Square. To even call it a restaurant is, in fact, undermining its identity because it’s a club at heart — its tables ready to be pushed aside on weekend nights while a deejay commands the booth and the walls reverberate with bass. 

Takoyaki. Photography by Angel Tucker

On weeknights, however, its ten massive televisions play Korean music videos and welcome in what may be Providence’s most diverse collection of diners. (“This is awesome,” says one guy, arriving after work with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. “I’m feeling like Providence is actually a legit city!”)

Appropriately, between the two bars, and more than a hundred seats, Seoul has managed to build a menu that exponentially increases urban affection. It’s Korean at its core but pulls from every culture that uses food as the foundation for a high-decibel party. There’s certainly a nod to American appetites: Small plates are often fried, and if state fair hyperbole is your thing, welcome home. 

Wedges of kielbasa are seared and served with caramelized onions and habanero honey ($10) — which eats like a marriage between hot dogs and Sugar Babies candy. It’s not particularly spicy, but it’s smoky and sweet and validates every attempt to cook bacon in brown sugar. Mozzarella sticks are wrapped in spring roll wrappers, deep-fried, and served with wasabi marinara sauce ($9), a quartet of crispiness that merges Asian street food and Federal Hill. 

Jun(e) Blues shareable cocktail. Photography by Angel Tucker

There are more traditional plates, such as kimchi pancakes ($11–$15), though they also fall under the umbrella of good things that taste better after a bath in bubbling oil. Even the tteok — traditional chewy rice cakes ($14) — are coated in a Cheez-Whizzy sauce that conjures more Kansas than Korea. But those are the rules of the game here: You should be able to grab a bite with one hand, hold a drink in the other, and still be able to dance like a boy band in formation. 

Entrees do exist, though few are handheld. If they’re eaten on the early shift, it doesn’t make them less cross-cultural than their smaller siblings. Traditional dishes — bibimbap, japchae (sauteed sweet potato noodles) and fragrant kalbi (seared short ribs) are all worth ordering, but there are fusion options that are worth the disorientation. 

Kielbasa bites, wonton mozzarella sticks and kimchi pancakes. Photography by Angel Tucker

Garlic noodles ($12) are cooked in butter sauce with Parmesan but manage to embody the singe of Asian stir-fry and the bucolic nostalgia of aglio e olio in a single bite. (If anyone doubts dinner’s ability to build the proverbial bridges, send them to Seoul.) Even the signature fried rice ($16), which adds chorizo into its panoply of ingredients, manages to double down on an archetype while excavating new ground. “Is it me or does this taste like paella?” queried one diner to a group who responded with equal measure of agreement and dissent. 

But this is what Seoul’s kitchen does: It delivers bites that hit some note of familiarity, whether the diner is proficient in Korean cuisine or entirely new to its culinary lexicon. Oh — and Seoul will also remind you, early and often, that cocktails are like music: they transcend any one culture in favor of all of them. Party Towers — what amounts to three quarts of juiced-up liquor — may be the enemy of good sense but they demarcate the line between evening at Seoul and nighttime. 

Seoul’s interior. Photography by Angel Tucker

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SEOUL PROVIDENCE

3 Davol Sq., Providence, 234-9393, seoulprovidence.com

Open seven days for lunch and dinner. The dance floor comes alive Fridays after 10 p.m. Lot and street parking.

Must Get: Anything fried and all the noodles.