We have a few Japanese restaurants in town – three, if I am not wrong, excluding one of those franchises but including the one that we frequent quite a lot. However, we only have a Korean fried chicken franchise place and we do not have a full-fledged Korean restaurant. My girl loves the spicy Yangnyeom Original at the former and their fried chicken with the yellow sauce (that tastes something like honey mustard) is quite nice too, anytime better than the Colonel’s.
This…
…has been around for a long long time ever since my girl was little and we used to drop by quite frequently…
…but other than the Korean “barbecue” and the complimentary kimchi that they would give everytime, I do not recall anything that we had there that was Korean. All the other dishes would be more or less what we can get at a lot of other places in town, more Chinese than Korean but everything tasted great and it was cheap. I think at the time, we could opt for the RM10.00 per head set dinner and for groups of 10, one would eat free. Somehow or other, I just stopped going though I do drop by this place located right below the restaurant time and time again.
Well, seeing that my girl and the mum are so into everything Korean these days, I decided to take them there last Sunday to see if it was any different than before…and goodness gracious me!!! The place was packed to the brim and there wasn’t a single table left. Just then, the people at a table by the door were done and they left and the lady boss asked us to sit there. There was a family who got there ahead of us – a couple and a son and an older man, probably the grandfather of the little boy, and even though she kept insisting, I simply refused to take the table and asked her to give it to them since they were there first. I told my girl to check the menu to see if there were things that would be typically Korean but there wasn’t really much so we decided to leave. The lady boss saw us and quickly asked us not to go, saying that there would be a vacant table very soon.
True enough, a group at one table left and we grabbed the seats at that one, adjoining another table where the diners were still eating. The workers (if I’m not wrong, there were only two) took quite a while to come by and clear everything and clean the table but it was all right – they had to do the serving as well. Then my missus pointed out that there were a few tables yet to order and we probably would have to wait forever for our turn so we got up and started to leave. Nope! We did not get to do that as the lady boss came again and said that she would take the order soon and everything would be served very fast…so we sat down again.
The group at the next table left and some sweet young things came and sat there but the lady boss came quickly and told them that the table had been booked and apologised that there wasn’t any table left so they would have to go elsewhere (which they did). Then she asked us to move to another table (adjoining another table where a couple was already eating away even though when we sat down at the first table, they had not ordered yet!) as there was a big group coming and she had to give them the two tables. Ok, we moved as instructed…even though my patience was already running out.
I wanted to order the more-like-Korean things on the menu such as the bibimbap or the kimchi fried rice…but she said we would have to wait a long time and advised us to take Set Meal B (for 3 persons)…
…and we would be served in a jiffy! In the end, we relented but I insisted on ordering the Korean seafood pancake (haemuipajeon) as well, ignoring all that she was saying about having to wait.
This was served first…
…the pickled seaweed appetiser and boy, it was so very nice – a lot nicer than the one at the fried chicken franchise place. The one we had there reeked so strongly of sesame oil and I am never a fan of that. I was beginning to feel much better already after being real pissed off by all the initial calamity.
This came just as quickly…
…except that we had to wait a bit for everything to cook before we could eat. I guess this is the typical Korean BBQ (barbecue) though to me, it is more like a steamboat except that there is no soup. I refused to give up that easily and helped myself to the little…
…that there was at the side. It was so flavourful, so very nice, and I noticed my girl enjoying it too.
Next, there was the jap chae (chap che on the menu) – the Korean fried glass noodles…
…and we all loved it a lot! It went especially well with the special (chili) sauce that they gave in a little Chinese teacup-like bowl, one each. Now, those glass noodles looked unusually big – I wonder if I can buy them at the shops so I can try frying my own.
To our disappointment, we did not get any kim chi fried rice and instead we got this…
…that we can get anytime at any of the Chinese stalls or shops. What was worse was that they used those frozen vegetables from the supermarts, the ones with the peas that will not turn soft no matter how long they are cooked!
Then our seafood pancake…
…came and this was so very good. There were prawns and squids inside…and bits of shitake mushroom and leek and onions too. We loved it immensely but we were already too full by then so each of us had a slice and took the rest of it home.
Just when we thought that was all there was, they served the fried kangkong (water spinach)…
I don’t think that’s Korean or even if they do have something similar, they probably would cook it differently, not like this – the way they do it at the chu-char (cook-fry) places here. Anyway, we were all too full by then so we asked for it to be tapao-ed for us to take home along with what was left of the seafood pancake.
This drink was part and parcel of the set as well – the luo han guo with mok mee (white fungus)…
The bill totalled RM60.00, no GST, no service charge…and that, I must say, was incredibly cheap! Dinner for three at our regular places would go way beyond this amount these days, usually for just one meat dish, a vegetable and a soup…with plain white rice. At this rate, plus the fact that the food is pretty good, I sure would love to go again…but I guess it would be best to make a reservation or drop by early or go for lunch instead. They open seven days a week, 10.30 to 2.00 p.m. and 5.30 to 10.00 p.m. and if anyone is wondering where it is located, it is in that block of shophouses to the right of Paramount Hotel, Jalan Kpg. Datu, on the 1st floor.
In the meantime, I am waiting for this new Korean place to open…and I hear there is another one coming soon as well. My girl and the mum would be mighty pleased, I’m sure. LOL!!!
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 