The first kitchen was a mossy stone, warmed by the sub-atomic particles from a time machine that stranded travelers from the future, who then launched human civilization with a stone kitchen. Keep the tradition alive with today's deal: for $15, you get $35 worth of Korean cuisine for dinner at Stone Korean Kitchen downtown.

Stone's proprietors set out to share Korean dishes inspired by their families' familiar recipes. All food is prepared in-house, including dumplings made by hand every morning and kalbi marinated overnight, every night. Warm up appetites for dinner with Stone fried chicken wings tossed in a house sauce ($7) or crispy tofu, fried and served with a sweet garlic soy sauce ($5). Entrees are as plentiful and diverse as a raging Technicolor snowstorm. Try the hwae dup bap, the local fish of the day served sashimi style with tobiko, fresh greens, and veggies over steamed rice ($14.50). Noodles swim in the ja jang myun's bean sauce, served with pork, zucchini, onions, and cucumbers ($10.50). Keeping in line with traditional values, Stone Korean Kitchen's chefs use only the freshest local produce and highest-quality meats.

Stone provides a laid-back environment for indulging Korean comfort-food dishes and wine, sake, and soju or Korean, Japanese, and international beers. The restaurant features granite tabletops and floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the Embarcadero and Ferry Building, providing a view dominated only by colorful dishes served in steaming heaps. So lean back and enjoy a meal prepared with mother-style care and attention to detail exactly unlike the care of a bird mother who pre-digests the family meal.

Reviews

Foodies at both Thrillist and Beyond Koreanfornian Cooking praise Stone's home-style Korean entrees, while Yelpers give the restaurant 3.5 stars.

• Affordable small plates range from the seafood pa jun (savory pancake with squid, shrimp, and scallions), to crispy/sweet/spicy rice cakes with sesame seeds, to the signature Stone wings fried in a tangy "special sauce" -- which needed extra attention, so it was reared in a small, private facility, by an extra patient saucemaker. – Thrillist
• There were several packages of kimbap — one of my favorites — stacked at the front desk just inside the front door. How could I resist? The marinated beef, pickled daikon radish, egg and garlic-marinated spinach rolls were some of the best kimbap I’ve had in a long time. – Beyond Koreanfornian Cooking