Like - Koreatown Valets
Every time I go back to LA I try to visit to Koreatown. It’s an incredibly dense area that has many of the best restaurants in the city. Yes, Ktown has you covered with tons of Korean BBQ spots but it also has seemingly endless other options too. That’s because a great deal of the restaurants in Ktown specialize in one dish. So, if you want bibimbap you go to the bibimbap place, not the dak galbi, sul lung tang, or raw marinated crab places. It’s what makes Ktown a food lover’s paradise. The only catch is that the vast majority of these restaurants are in strip malls and the strip malls almost always seem to be full. “Ok so what? Go park on the street.” But you can’t do that either because the area is so dense that street parking is virtually nonexistent. You might get lucky but you’ll probably just end up driving down the same few streets in a growing state of frustration. This is where the valets come in huge. More often than not, you’ll go into a strip mall and find a guy waiting to take your keys. Valet parking isn’t novel in Los Angeles, plenty of fancy restaurants have valets that cost anywhere from $10 - $20. But the Ktown valets? They’re all like $2 - $4, even today in the year 2024 of our lord. Why? I couldn’t tell ya. It certainly doesn’t seem like a great way to make money. Perhaps a deal was struck between the restaurants and the valets to stay cheap. Or maybe they’re just into doing people a big solid because that’s also allowed. It’s not my business how they run their operations but I’m always happy to give my business to them.