Western Doma Noodles

Great selection of older Korean cuisine. The service is kind of slow with usually only one or two workers here but she gives you special attention so I have no problem at all. Great place to eat. Restaurant has been here for over ten years. Cant go wrong here

Stopped by for lunch today. This is a small place with a menu offering literally every single Korean dish. They have all kinds of soups and jjigaes (even samgaetang and dak gae Jang), noodle dishes, meat entrees, rice dishes (bibimbap) and so much more.
Opted for the bibim guksoo — Korean cold noodles mixed with a spicy yet tangy sauce. It’s heavily sauced and not for those who can’t handle spice but it’s delicious. You can get it with momil (buckwheat) or regular white noodles. Portions here are HUGE. Banchan is just okay, nothing special. They give you complimentary ddukbokki as an appetizer and will give you more if you ask but the ddukbokki here is way too sweet and not that good imo.
Cheap prices for huge portions and a menu that offers virtually any Korean dish you could possibly want. Free parking in the shared plaza lot.

I would love to give this place a higher rating but I can’t due to slow slow slow service. The food is good but it takes forever for them to take orders and if you thought it took long for them to come by to take your order it takes even longer for them to bring you your check and take your payment. To go orders take even longer. I stood there and waited over 10 mins for them to take my payment.

REALLY excellent good! And so much of it!!! I ordered the pan fried mandoo (dumpling) and mixed seafood kalkooksoo (handmade noodle soup).
The dumplings were absolutely delicious. Crispy, stuffed with a flavorful blend of veggies, clear noodles and meat, and served with a spicy vinegar sauce to dip in.
The bowl of soup was massive, the knife-​cut noodles were thick and had the perfect texture. My typical complaint with seafood kalgooksoo is that the broth is generally too thin and doesn’t have much flavor, but this broth was incredibly deep and rich.
And the banchan… PRAISE JESUS, the banchan! I went in there alone still got served at least 7 or 8 bowls of various banchan. All fresh, all delicious. Can’t wait to go back and try their spicy chicken stew, which is what they’re known for.
What the other reviews say about the slow service is true, so don’t go unless you have time to spare. There is indeed only one little Korean lady who serves everybody, but she’s lovely and very sweet.

I saw the Yolmu cold noodle dish on a Unilocal pic and said «that’s what I want for dinner tonight». It’s not a sexy steaming meat dish and the waiter even warned me their «cold» noodles, I didn’t care. It was delicious. Just order it, you will be happy you did. Next time I might get that chicken dish. The people next to me got it and it looked amazing.

I was by LACMA over the weekend and I really wanted some dukbokki (sp?). Stumbled upon this place and I was so impressed. The sweet lady and her waiter dude are like so efficient and the service is ridiculously good I thought. I got the home made chicken noodle soup and it totally hit the spot. It’s also pretty great that they can make anything vegetarian, because my veggie roomie and I always need to find veg friendly options. Deliciousness, just you’ll have to find parking pretty far away, I was under the impression the parking lot was valet only? Maybe I’m wrong…

You know what? This place is not bad. Not bad at all. It’s not the best… But the price is affordable and the flavor is there.
I ordered a soup noodle which was pretty bland, but still salty. I wasn’t too impressed. And it tasted like plastic from the dish. Or dishwash.
The steamed dumplings were pretty good, but I might be bias because I LOVE dumplings. Nothing too special there either. The prize winner was the chicken stew. It’s huge! You’ll definitely need to share with a friend. Unless you’re really hungry then this dish would be perfect. The flavor was good, portion good, price is good.
Side dishes were plentiful but it wasn’t Great. Atleast you get a few free duboki!

Still awesome.
I really dont know the names for any of the food but they were all good. See attached photos.

We ordered the beef clear noodles. It has a lot of flavors but a little oily. We also ordered the squid with noodles on the side. That was good and it was really big. The vegetable dumplings was okay. Would not order it again. The waitress is a very cute old korean lady that didn’t speak much English. Will come back.

One of Koreatown’s hidden gems. This restaurant is definitely a place where they offer «mom’s cooking» type of meals.
They have the best Dak Dori Tang (Spicy Korean Chicken Stew) that I’ve ever tasted, IMO. But be careful to those who can’t handle spicy, it’s PRETTY spicy… I love spicy food, but if you don’t tell the lady you want it less spicy you’ll be sweating through your meal the whole time.
TIP: If you’re going to get this dish, call ahead of time and they’ll have it ready for you! Just let them know how many people are in your party and how much serving you want.
Their service is EXCELLENT too! Super friendly… Even when they’re super busy and packed, they take good care of you. The friendly Hispanic man also speaks a little bit of Korean!

I’ll start by saying that I don’t frequent authentic Korean restaurants so this was new for me. With that, if you want the authentic experience and authentic Korean food, you should try this place. They give you a lot of vegetables before your meal comes and the meal comes pretty quickly. I ordered the bibimbap. It was ok but I have had better. The portion sizes are great and you may have enough to take home.
The parking is tight in their lot but there is a lot of street parking around.

Truly a Ktown gem, and if anyone says otherwise, they can have a few words with me in a dark alleyway. My go-​to here is the Jjolmyun, and to my non-​Korean friends, that’s a Spicy Noodle dish that never disappoints! You can actually get a lot of popular Korean dishes here such as Toppoki, Kalguksu, Galbi, etc. However, my favorite by far is the Jjolymyun, which probably most would disagree with.
Everything here seems to be overall really good, and just made with care. While other restaurants sloppily put things together, resulting in poor tasting Korean dishes, this place excels in giving us a taste of Korea.
I really enjoy the service here, the lady that works here is a real sweetie. And sometimes, when I can leave the office, I just get Western Doma delivered via the Rushorder app (HUNGRY3 promo code if you wanna shave off some bucks).

Western Doma Noodle is one of those hole-​in-​the-​wall restaurants that make you feel like you’ve entered your korean grandma’s home + kitchen. The older lady and younger man who works there are so sweet! I’ve been there 5 – 7 times!
They always serve you many side dishes and a couple pieces of spicy rice cake to start off! The side dish quality is very home like (more simple than most restaurants).
My favorite entrees are the haemyulpajun (seafood pancake), bibimbap, kimchi stew, and ddakdoritang (spicy chicken and potatoes). The portions are large and I always end up getting to-​go! However service can be slow if the place is packed! So if you’re in a rush, this restaurant might not be it! We usually walk to the restaurant because my friend lives close by, but I can imagine parking to be difficult since it’s in a small plaza! But they do have valet!
My friend loves this place because she says it reminds her of her grandmas cooking! It’s not gourmet compared to other korean restaurants like BCD, but it does hit the spot for korean home cooking!

There are two things that kept this from being a five star review. First of all, there were flies. I like to eat in peace and not have to protect my food from flies. Secondly, the lady was super stingy with the kimchi. This was the closest Korean restaurant to go to since I was having pregnancy cravings for kimchi. You think she would’ve gotten the point after asking her three times for more kimchi. She kept refilling the little saucer with three little pieces. After asking her for the fourth time, she made a face and refilled the small saucer begrudgingly.
The food was good though…

It looked good enough from the pictures, but as we all know, looks can be deceiving. My buddy Richard S. and I decided to give this place a try and we both left with mediocre opinions of the place, with his faring worse than mine.
We walked in and for a while, no one came to seat us or even acknowledge our existence, so we just sat ourselves down in the corner. Then all of a sudden, the nice owner/​ahjumma that everyone talks about comes rushing out with menus and apologizes for the wait.
We never see her again, and her other waiter comes to help us out. They are understaffed here for some reason and service is a bit of a crawl. Our steamed dumplings came out before our banchan, and were not that good. The skin was weird– it was a bit sticky and hard, so it was not very delightful of a mandu at all. I would skip these, but perhaps they are better pan-​fried.
Seafood Pancake came out next and was different than other places– it had squid, shrimp and scallion like normal, but also had imitation crab, kamaboko and onion. Some parts on the bottom were burnt, but not too badly and there were some crispy brown bits and soft bits that didn’t crisp up that well. It was ok, but it was extremely greasy– more so than the ones I’ve had in the past.
The galbi was a bit tough to chew for Rich, but I found it ok. The taste was pretty good and sweeter, but again this was pretty oily compared to other places.
Last was the japchae. I thought this was great, it stuck together and was very sticky though, but it was hot and had some bulgogi, zucchini, carrot, scallion and large slices of mushroom, which I adore. This too was quite oily, however.
By the way, the banchan was just ok– I liked the spicy bitter melon and the gobo root. Everything else was just ok (potato salad, seaweed, kimchi, radish, etc).
For $ 53 before tax and tip, this was quite pricey for what it was. I did like that afterwards, they gave you watermelon. Despite that, I don’t forsee coming back again, especially when all that grease made my stomach feel uncomfortable for several hours afterwards.

Came here not expecting much. Was craving jjajangmyun, and my friend saw that they had jjambbong, so we figured they’d have both. Wrong, but I didn’t mind. The service was slow, but the previous reviews mention that. It’s this older lady who does all the serving, so I get it.
We went as a party of 4, and we ordered the seafood green onion pancake, ddukbbokki, steamed dumblings (hehe, how they spelled it – s’cute), spicy squid, spicy pork, dumpling rice cake soup, and jjambbong kal gook soo. SO MUCH FOOD, and the servings were HUGE! Needless to say, we had so many leftovers to take home.
I think my favorite was the seafood green onion pancake and my jjambbong kal gook soo (not the regular noodles you’d usually get). The jjambbong’s soup was a bit heavier and thicker than normal, more saucey than soupy, but it was so good! And they don’t skimp on the seafood! My least favorite was the steamed dumplings. I took one bite and couldn’t eat the rest. Just not the kind of dumplings I was looking for, something about it was so off, and we all agreed that it wasn’t very good.
I was surprisingly impressed by the quality of the food. Parking wasn’t horrible, we found residential parking a block away, but there’s also valet parking. However, if you want to go eat in ktown, I’d recommend going on a Monday or Tuesday as it’s less congested and therefore, no lines.

For some odd reason, this place was bookmarked for quite some time and for unknown reasons. However, I would like to thank the past Tom for doing so, because he may have found a hidden gem in K-​Town.
The parking for Western Doma is horrible, and I was lucky enough to find some parking in the residential area nearby. After reading reviews saying that this place gets packed, I was kind of happy that my party got there just in time, because there weren’t too many customers.
Because of the hardcore heatwave that SoCal was experience, I opted for something that I have never tried before, a bowl of spicy cold noodles (naengmyeon). My friends ordered things that seemed like they would be small portioned, soup and noodle soup, and thought that would be it. Instead, the little grandma who runs the shop brought out a bowl of chili-​infused soy sauce. We were kind of dumbfounded about it, and she explained that it was for the dumplings. Again, we all blinked our eyes for a moment, thinking she must have gotten our order wrong.
I started to remember why I bookmarked this place, and I think the banchan was the reason; a LOT of banchan. This place doesn’t skim on the banchan; 10 different banchan. 10, 1 – 0. Yes, I’m excited about banchan because places like these would usually serve 5 at the most, but 10.
Along with the banchan, an order of pan-​fried dumplings came out. Instead of questioning it, we just decided to enjoy them. Very juicy and nothing too out of the ordinary. About 25% into dinner, a plate of spicy rice cakes arrived. Again, we were confused, and just enjoyed it. At the end of it all, we decided that we were just going to pay extra for the extra dishes, because a) if we didn’t ordered them, it’s only fair to pay for what we ate, and b) if it was a nice gesture, it should be rewarded.
I have to say, if you are trying cold noodles for the first time, Western Doma would be a nice place to test the waters. Even though there wasn’t any actual meat in the dish, I did enjoy the lightness and spiciness; not too heavy and not too vinegary. Lots of veggies and buckwheat noodles, POSSIBLY homemade, as my friend noticed that his noodles in his soup tasted like homemade.
As my friends and I were discussing random skincare stuff, we noticed that the grandma was giving some kids at a different table a box of Pocky and some candy. It looks like she was being extra nice to everyone who dropped a few bucks here and there, something in South Korea calls «service», which means free things with purchase. Granted, we’re not in South Korea, and I wasn’t expecting this nice gesture.
Overall, this would be a place I would come back for more food. Now, don’t expect free food to come to your table, because maybe there was a reason behind it, but do expect actual home cooking from here. And also, be careful about the spicy level here; seems like my friends noticed the food was a bit spicier than what they’re used to, and I didn’t have much problems with the spicy level with my cold noodles.

It was not a good night when we went for dinner couple of weekends ago.
The older lady that was helping customers was totally overwhelmed by herself on the floor. She was sweet, but she was unable to help all the customers, so the Hispanic waiter/​busboy was also helping with service. I just don’t understand why restaurants do this. Can’t they just hire another waitress and give customers a better experience? I feel like it is minimal investment for a maximum return.
It took a while for us to have a table cleaned, took a while to order our food, and even though we asked a couple of times, we didn’t get our drinks for a long time.
We ordered the black cod and seafood kalgooksoo, which we got eventually.
I gave two stars because the black cod was very good. The seafood kalgooksoo, on the other hand, was the worst ever. It was SO bland, it didn’t taste like anything. I took a couple of bites and I couldn’t continue. To their credit, they quickly took the dish back and offered to give us something else. I just ordered their tteokbokki, since I figured they can’t mess with that. Tteokbokki was just ok. They also gave us some fried mandoo, which was not impressive either.
It was weird since she gave us some soybean sprout soup, and this also had no flavor whatsoever. It was like someone in the back was consistently forgetting to season the soups. Even though we didn’t ask for the soybean sprout soup or mandoo and it was nice of the lady to give it to us, when we did ask for the bill it took forever for that to come.
Overall, it was one of the worse dinners we had in a long time. I appreciate that they tried to fix their mistakes, and the lady was very sweet when she did spend time with us. I know other people that love this place, so hopefully it was just their off night. If you do make it out there, order the black cod, since that is seriously good.

Pretty good! It’s a tiny place with a small plaza parking lot in front (Valet). Otherwise, try to find neighborhood parking. In any case, this place is very simple. The theme is wood — lots of big polished wood tables. Limited menu. When I came, there were two parties of 10 people, so limited seating for everyone else.
Also, if you’re in a hurry, this place is not for you. They have limited staffing, so getting someone to take your order or get you the bill can be a wait. However, overall, the service is good and they are very polite. Accepts Visa, Mastercard, which is nice for a small Korean place.
1. Banchan: You get 10 of these. Loved it! So fresh. It’s nice to get these even when you don’t have Korean BBQ.
2. Seafood pancake: Among the best I’ve had at Korean places. It’s chock full of ingredients… not many fillers. And it’s huge.
3. Bibimbap: Yummy. I tend to like all bibimbap, so don’t take my word for it, but it really was yummy.
4. Steamed dumplings (spelled dumblings on the menu :-) … in any case, vegetarian with glass noodles and veggies. Healthy and good!
I saw a bunch of people get the spicy chicken or the big bowls of red soup, but my stomach wouldn’t have been able to handle it…

Aww Halmeoni is so cute.
As the other reviews shared, there is only one lady taking orders, serving, and ringing up the customers. The place isn’t huge, but if you’re hangry you need to calm your hanger.
The boyfriend and I felt like having Korean food for dinner and were torn whether or not to settle for something on the westside or drive a little farther to get the legit stuff in Ktown. We obviously don’t mess around so we went to Ktown.
They have valet parking here, but we managed to find street parking for free in the residential streets.
We got the obligatory seafood pancake, spicy seafood soup, and the spicy beef soup. The seafood pancake was the best seafood pancake I’ve had yet. To push it over the top, halmeoni served us our first slice and put the sauce on it for us. You can’t object, it would be like rejecting your grandma. The soups came out piping hot, and stayed that way the whole time we were there. I couldn’t finish the seafood soup, it definitely could feed a couple people.
The banchan was awesome. As the other reviews say it comes with the rice cakes. I’ve never had rice cakes as a part of the banchan, and now all other banchans will never compare. Great.
This place is cute little place to go if you aren’t in a rush and want good Korean food and a homey feel.