100 Favorite Dishes, No. 36: Wild and Crazy Banchan at Junction Craft Kitchen

Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year. In Korean restaurants, banchan are the tiny veggie dishes that come free with the meal. They might include...

By Brian Reinhart

August 21, 2017

The banchan at Junction deliver unexpected, experimental bites. Kathy Tran

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Leading up to September's Best of Dallas® 2017 issue, we're sharing (in no particular order) our 100 Favorite Dishes, the Dallas entrées, appetizers and desserts that really stuck with us this year.

In Korean restaurants, banchan are the tiny veggie dishes that come free with the meal. They might include pickled daikon slices, bamboo shoots, kimchi, cubed potatoes in chili sauce and japchae, the marvelous salad of clear sweet potato noodles, scallions and sesame seeds.

At Junction Craft Kitchen, where chef Joshua Harmon and his small team fuse Korean flavors with American cooking, the banchan are a chance to go crazy and deliver unexpected, experimental bites.

Each dinnertime, a small group of three to five will be available for $2 each. We suggest ordering all of them since even the weird ones are at least intriguing. Some of the banchan we’ve sampled at Junction: pickled radishes topped with fennel flowers, black radish kimchi fermented in squid ink and aged for eight months, a tortilla chip topped with strawberry-jalapeno pico de gallo, charred green onions, and a tiny biscuit topped with dill and a jam of figs and pig blood. Always adventurous and always removed from the ordinary, Junction Craft Kitchen’s banchan are an essential part of the experience.

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Brian Reinhart has been the Dallas Observer's food critic since spring 2016. In addition, he writes baseball analysis for the Hardball Times and covers classical music for the Observer and MusicWeb International.

Contact: Brian Reinhart

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