Prepared to be delighted, my friend Hue and I arrive at Pioneer Square near Chinatown — which I haven’t included in this series yet, because declaring a preferred section of Spring Valley would be like saying out loud I have a favorite cousin. This strip mall, on Decatur between Desert Inn and Spring Mountain, holds more gems than I have space to write about.
At Moobongri Soondae we sit among the Sunday crowd and eat stone pot bibimbap topped with sesame oil and gochujang, and served alongside six different banchan and daikon soup. A franchise from South Korea via Los Angeles, the restaurant is known for its blood sausage and less barbeque–centered food. It is supposed to open a second Las Vegas location inside the H Mart we have all been drooling over. Outside the big windows the day pretends not to be hot, the blue sky dotted with cartoon clouds and the cold barley tea erasing our memory of the scalding parking lot.
Outside, we wander past two massage places, the 9 Dragons Fight Shop, which sells combat-sport gear, and Habib’s Tailoring & Leather Repair (see “Best of the City,” p. 63), to the recently opened La Michoacana Ice Cream & Popcorn. Though similar in name and color palette, it’s not to be confused with the 27 other places in Vegas with Michoacan in their name. “We are from Michoacana,” says Nohemi Gonzalez, who owns the shop with her uncle Jose Luis Gonzalez, as she hands us samples of almost everything on the menu. She brims with enthusiasm for the house-made ice cream, multicolored paletas, snack food, and their special esquites with chipotle. La Michoacana is not a franchise but a series of independently owned shops in the U.S. and Mexico. “Each one has its own thing,” Gonzalez says. “If you see the same name, it’s because it’s the same owner.” We order a cucumber lime agua fresca and banana and mazapán ice creams and sit at a little table basking in Gonzalez’s attention.
At Mom’s Refrigerator, a family run meat market and banchan store with perhaps the best name in Vegas, I walk slowly along the wall of cases, delighted by the selection of kimchi — six flavors plus an entire napa cabbage marinated whole — marinated shellfish, meats, and eggs, and all manner of vegetables in bright chili sauces. It’s not an easy decision, but I choose potato salad, radish kimchi, braised tofu, and a zesty calamansi soda. At the counter I discover they also have a huge menu of hot food: bento boxes, savory pancakes, porridge, street food, and soups, which I vow to come back for.
I recommend checking out all Pioneer Square has to offer, but if you’d like the bounty of Mom’s Refrigerator brought to your own home, like the best of mothers, they deliver.