We went on a dumpling crawl in Koreatown. Here’s where to find the best mandu

Los Angeles is home to a vibrant, bustling Koreatown with the largest population of Korean people outside of Korea. It’s a sprawling food mecca where you can find a seemingly endless variety of Korean dishes, and plenty of dumplings.

Korean mandu comes in all shapes and sizes, with both sweet and savory fillings. On this week’s episode, we visit three specialists. First, we head to Pao Jao Dumpling House, a stall inside the food court at Koreatown Plaza. Owners Eunice Lee and Seong Cho moved to the U.S. from Seoul in the ’90s. At the stall, I met up with Koreatown Run Club co-founder and Love Hour burger co-owner Michael Pak to sample some of Pao Jao’s spicy shrimp dumplings and grilled fried dumplings.

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At CHD Mandu, a dumpling restaurant that originated in Seoul, owner Jihyung Park showed us how to make the restaurant’s signature mandu sampler, which includes galbi, shrimp, pork, kimchi and jalapeño-stuffed mandu. The dumplings are pan-fried until crisp on both sides and served alongside an assortment of dipping sauces that includes spicy mayo, lime mayo and gourmet soy sauce.

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The last stop was Myung In for some of Jessica Kim’s Chinese-Korean dumplings. Kim, who says she traveled to China to learn how to make dumplings, makes a variety of styles, but the softball-sized steamed King mandu are a favorite. The pillowy-soft dumplings are filled with pork and kimchi, pork and vegetables or sweet red bean. I was mesmerized watching Kim and chef Li Li stuff, fold and shape the mandu. Forget puppy cams. Dumpling cams should be a thing.