Times are changing in Korea Town. Those couple of kimchi-scented blocks just north of Kabukicho are still the best place in the city to find home-style cooking as spiced up as you'd get on the Korean Peninsula. But, slowly, the inexorable process of gentrification is under way.
We're not saying the neighborhood has gone to the dogs -- that would give the wrong idea in several different ways (though we are reliably informed of a few places inside Kabukicho that do specialize in canine cuisine). It's just that the whole restaurant scene along Shokuan-dori is getting too popular by far.
These days, just about the last of the original, first-generation eateries left on Shokuan-dori is the good old Kankoku Shokudo. It doesn't serve the finest Korean food in town -- far from it, in fact. But there are some evenings (and lunchtimes and early mornings, too) when you just want to slum it, and you couldn't come to a better place.