Madison, Wisconsin Korean Restaurant K-Peppers has Best Bulgogi Barbeque in Town

Madison, Wisconsin Korean restaurants are hard to find, but I was fortunate enough to track down one a few miles west in Middleton.

K-PEPPERS at 1901 Cayuga Street is a Korean restaurant in Middleton that is as close to Seoul fare as you're going to get anywhere in Wisconsin. The restaurant's low-profile front facade tells little about what's inside, but once you walk through the door and take a couple sniffs, you'll know it's going to be good.

The tables are all regular height, so no taking off the shoes and sitting on the floor. And they use metal rather than wooden chopsticks, which can be a little tough to weild if you're new to chopsticks.

We had the beef bulgogi and spicy pork bulgogi, which are both versions of Korean barbeque. The meats were perfectly cooked and the seasonings gave them a nice, sweat taste that allowed it to melt in your mouth. The servers asked us up front what degree of hotness we would like. They use a 1 to 5 scale. We went with one the first time just to be safe. It was a little warm but not overwhelming.

The sides included much of what you would expect from a traditional Korean meal. The cabbage kimchi was well seasoned but not too hot. The seaweed salad had nice texture and good crunch. They also served coleslaw which was nothing special and seasoned fried broccoli which tasted good but didn’t seem to fit the cuisine for some reason. The rice was perfectly cooked and soup had a nice subtle flavor - not too salty.

The one thing that stood out and made K-Peppers Madison's best Korean restaurant was the lettuce they served. No other Korean restaurant in Madison serves lettuce leaves with their bulgogi. This seems to be such a big part of this Korean meal and it was nice to finally find someone in this area that was doing it right.

So by the end of the meal I was able to give K-Peppers 8 out of ten. The food was great, although they could have had more sides. The wait staff was friendly and they made sure you had everything that you needed. I will certainly return to K-Pepper Fusion Korean Cuisine in the future.

According to their Web site, K-Peppers was founded by Eric and Rachel Kim. Shortly after moving from Buson to Seoul, South Korea, they had the inspiration to build a restaurant.

Once in Seoul, Eric and Rachel honed their cooking skills under the guidance of some of the best cooking instructors in Korea.

In 2008 they decided the best place to open a restaurant would be America, so they headed to Wisconsin.

K-Peppers is the result of over 3 years of hard work, and features Korean-American Fusion food.