Three-layered flesh” is the translation of the Korean word samgyeopsal, or what English speakers refer to less vividly as pork belly. Meat, fat, and skin stack up as the most popular cut on the grill among Koreans, and you can find it at pretty much every barbecue house in the city and suburbs. What you don’t find very often—the way you would in Korea—are samgyeopsal specialists: operators who focus on belly, capitalizing on a national-size appetite for crispy, spitting-hot mouthfuls of pig belly, dredged through salty sesame oil and wrapped in lettuce leaves with a smear of funky soybean paste and a sliver of griddled garlic.
These choices all have subtle textural differences. If you favor a bit of a gnaw, go for the jowl or the skin-on slabs. If you don’t enjoy the resistance, get the more tender scored belly. It’s up to you, armed with tongs and scissors, to grill and portion these pieces, supplementing them with sliced white onion, garlic, chile peppers, and long leaves of pungent kimchi. Don’t forget to season them with sea salt. It’s also up to you how to package these little morsels: wrapped in cool lettuce or thin slices of pickled daikon, with the salted sesame oil gireumjang and the funky fermented ssamjang, a potent mixture of red chile and fermented soybean paste.
Apart from two cold noodle dishes—the sweet buckwheat noodle soup mul-naengmyun and its spicy, dry gochujang– slathered cousin bibim naengmyun—that’s all the food there is at Pro Samgyubsal. Along with the usual Korean and Japanese beers, there are a few brands of the fermented rice brew makgeolli and a small selection of soju.
3420 N. Milwaukee Ave., Northbrook 847-715-9073
