Mixing Korean and Puerto Rican? Try it at Bucktown’s Belly Shack.

Under the train tracks at Milwaukee and Western, Belly Shack mashes up two cuisines in a bout of creative, culinary charm. Urbanbelly’s Bill Kim and Yvonne Cadiz-Kim mix their Korean and Puerto Rican heritages at this bare bones, industrial feeling BYO.

Soft Puerto Rican bread is filled with earthy lemongrass meatballs and topped with rice noodles and spicy sauce, or fill your own with the Korean kogi, sweet barbecued meat and tangy kimchi. Crispy fries in tograshi spice pair with a rich curry mayo. End with sweets – soft serve topped with crumbled bacon bits and chocolate chip cookies or drizzled with dark caramel sauce and Vietnamese cinnamon.

Although you can’t help but feel that the place is a rip on David Chang, this is Chicago, miles from New York City, and the kimichi sandwiches and played up soft serve go down nicely.

Unfortunately, the food is a bit overzealous in the seasoning, probably much better at 2 a.m. after a long night of drinking. The tograshi fries are swimming in spice, the curry mayo is overpowering. And the subtle flavoring of the Asian meatball sandwich is lost in overwhelming, spicy sauce.

And one last thought, at a place called Belly Shack, where is the pork belly?