DINING OUT : A BIT OF KOREA IN VAN NUYS THIS TINY CAFE SERVES SPICY, HOMEY FARE.

Byline: Larry Lipson Daily News Restaurant Critic

Unless you can read Korean, you wouldn't know the name of the Evergreen restaurant, which is spelled out only in Korean letters on its facade in the HK Plaza on Sherman Way at White Oak Avenue in Van Nuys.

The name is Cho Eun (you'll find it spelled with English characters on your credit card receipt), meaning Evergreen, and it's a small, homey, casual restaurant with no meals priced over $12 - and most in the $6 to $9 range.

But what's better than the prices are the quality and the portioning.

And it may well be serving some of the best Korean cafe fare outside Koreatown.

Besides the woman owner-chef, there are a male chef and two women cooks who do much of the preparation, and if you linger late enough at lunch time, you'll see them enjoying their own food around 2:30 to 3 p.m.

Many of the offerings are soups, delivered steaming hot in good-size tureens, filled with exotic Asian vegetables and usually seasoned with fiery peppers.

A delicious example is the uncurdled bean curd soup ($6.95), chock-full of veggies and tasty tofu. There were even scattered oysters and pieces of octopus in it one day. I know one man who often orders this for breakfast. It certainly beats coffee to kick-start the day.

Soups with beef, oxtail, tripe, potato, dumplings, rice cakes, halibut, cod or pollack roe are on the regular menu here.

And a healthy-size pot of Korean sausage (soon dae) soup ($6.95) provided a satisfying luncheon dish one time.

When you order a meal here, you automatically receive about half a dozen kimchi and small condiment plates the Koreans call ``panchan.''

Nearly always among them is the spicy pickled napa cabbage kimchi and a bowl of toasted sweet soy beans.

Also there have been daikon, spinach, tiny anchovies, pickled nera, spicy cucumber and a dish of white jellylike cubes.

The soon dae is a blood sausage, dark, with a rice filler and cut into smallish pieces. It's very tasty, and with the assorted Asian vegetables in the soup, plus the panchan, makes for another hearty meal.

Order a Korean barbecue platter like the barbecued pork with hot sauce ($8.95) and, in addition to a heap of sizzling onions and gratifying slices of seasoned pork on a black iron skillet in a wooden holder shaped like a cow, you'll receive a closed metal container of white rice and a bowl of hot seaweed soup.

An iron pot is also used for a beef, mountain herbs and rice casserole dish ($7.95), an excellent combination with vegetables, tender beef and an array of intriguing tastes and textures.

If you like dumplings, the steamed won tons here ($7.95) will make you gasp. A platter of 15 of these large, thick, puffy goodies in a light, thin dough, stuffed with a ground meat mixture and served with a spicy dipping sauce, provides an appetizer course big enough to be shared by as many as five people, or an adequate whole meal for one.

And if you're not particularly enamored of octopus because of its often rubbery quality, have no fear; it's remarkably tender here.

It comes as a separate dish, fried with vegetables in a hot sauce ($10.95) or as part of the seafood (with shrimp) contained in the huge green onion pancake ($10.95).

The idea of eating soup for breakfast may be difficult for Westerners, but the green onion pancake, really more like an oversize Italian frittata, makes a lot of sense as a morning meal.

And both the soups and the pancake provide ideal lunches.

But be prepared for chili pepper heat. This little restaurant will certainly add spice to your life.

The facts

The restaurant: Cho Eun (Evergreen).

Where: 17621 Sherman Way, Van Nuys.

When: Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

Recommended items: Uncurdled bean curd soup, barbecued pork with hot sauce, Korean sausage (soo dae) soup, beef and mountain herbs over rice, steamed won ton platter, seafood and green onion pancake.

How much: All meals on the regular menu are priced from $6 to $12 except the plain buckwheat noodles plate for $2.99. No alcohol. All major credit cards.

Reservations: Taken only for parties of 10 or more. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three and 1/2 stars for food; three stars for service; four stars for value

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Owner-chef Joyce Jin, left, and server Oh Jae displa y some of the Korean dishes they offer at the Cho Eun - or Evergreen - restaurant in Van Nuys.

Phil McCarten/Daily News