Korea House is probably not a restaurant you know about. It’s tucked away in a small shopping plaza at the southwest corner of Glenwood and 28th. You can’t see it from the street. You’d see a gas station instead. You’d see The Bookworm and the Sew-Vac center. And if you went west on Glenwood you’d probably see Good Use’s new location. But you wouldn’t see Korea House unless you turned into that parking lot and continued two doors past Good Use.

It’s teeny-tiny, family-owned, open six days a week (not Sunday), and oh so good.

Actually, what’s oh so good is the Kim Chee Chi Gae. I can’t rightly comment on anything else because that’s all I ever order. I go in there with a laptop, I sit at the two-top next to the electrical outlet along the right-hand wall, and I take about an hour and a half to eat. I’d probably take that long even if I wasn’t working on my laptop, because the food comes to the table burn-yer-mouth hot and even the mild version can take the coating off your soft palette. However, I have become adept at relying on the sesame-kale salad and the pickled bean sprouts, rather than endless refills of Coke, to cool myself off between bites of tofu, pork, scallion, or daikon, or spoonfuls of molten lava broth.

I went in there yesterday for something like the first time since 2007 arrived in diapers and a bow. That’s going on seven months now since I was last there, probably more. And I had a different laptop, the ancient dinosaur-like Compaq Contura from 1994 which I use to write on when my Dell Inspiron is in the shop for repairs, which it is. I sat at the same table as usual, though. Maybe that was the clue. Maybe I have a memorable face. Or maybe the proprietors are just that good.

Because the hostess/waitress/restaurant owner went to give me the menu, then paused, and said, “Kim chee chi gae? Mild?”

Out loud, I said, “Yes, thank you. And a Coke.”

Silently, in my head, I was saying, “Damn you’re good.”

Obviously I need to go more often than twice a year.