Don’t ask me…

Don’t ask me what’s good when it comes to Korean food – other than our Korean fried chicken franchise here, when I was in Seoul a long long time ago in the winter, it was so cold and we enjoyed the mee sua in ginseng chicken soup and their traditional wine so much that we asked for that every meal every day during our stay there. Other than that, I had it once in Auckland, New Zealand and I thought it was pretty good but no, I did not like the kim chi. I do not even like the one my missus would make again and again despite fave reviews from all over but I would say that I loved it when she used it to fry some meat, pork or chicken…or to cook some fried rice. But for me, eating it straight is totally out of the question.

Anyway, that did not stop me from going to try this new Korean place in town. Let me rephrase that – my girl and the mum are so into anything Korean these days and they could not wait to go and try but it was a Wednesday and according to their Facebook page, they would be closed. Nonetheless, I just smsed them using a number that I found somewhere on their page to ask (seeing that they were closed that Monday for whatever reason), “Open tonight?” And they promptly replied, “Ya!” Off we went in the heavy rain – of all the days, it had to rain that night when it had been hot and dry almost every other day. Tsk! Tsk! When we got there, we saw a sign on the door saying that it was closed. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot! Well, that night, we ended up here eventually and since we enjoyed what we had there, we got over the initial displeasure soon enough.

Actually, they keep saying that they are not officially open yet, that they are still trailling their dishes and tweaking the menu. They do not even have a shop sign up! However, they do have a website, other than their Facebook page…and everybody seems to know about it. Everytime we drove past, we would see a lot of people eating there – it is on the first floor…

…above that very popular coffee place, opposite this building on the other side of the road…

And that was what I was told a long time ago!

Well, finally, we managed to drop by one Saturday evening after the sunset service at the church not that far away. It was way past 8.00 p.m. already but opening hours would be from 6.00 to 9.30 p.m. so we reckoned we would have enough time and yes, we did! It was a nice place, pretty basic, nice and simple and the only thing Korean in the decor was this nice thing that I spotted hanging on the wall…

Other than that, there were a lot of posters of those K-pop boy bands and stars though I wished they had not put those up as they made the place look kind of tacky. It would be perfectly all right to have such posters, or ones that are a bit nicer, on the bedroom walls of some star-stuck teenager girl or boy, not at a fine, classy restaurant.

Of course, what’s most important would be the food so let us look at our orders. As soon as we had taken our seats and asked for what we wanted, we were given these sides…

…and free flow of tea. I hear that they would keep refilling but no, we did not manage to finish them at all. Of course I did not touch the kim chi but my girl and her mum declared that the latter’s was a cut above what they served here. I was fine with everything else – the sausages, the pickled cucumber slices, the seaweed and even the fried ikan bilis and the taucheo (fermented bean paste) was a great help in enhancing the taste of some of the things that we had!

The pajeon seafood pancake (RM15.00)…

…was served first and it was, at best, all right. Ah well, how could anything cooked with egg be not all right? I would say it was a tad too oily for my liking though. They could have let it stand on some kitchen towels for a while before serving…and it sure looks a whole lot nicer in their photograph of the same on Facebook. Probably the chef forgot to flip it over…and for that kind of money, I would expect a lot more prawns or whatever seafood…

…than the miserable bits that took quite a bit of effort to detect.

The dolsot bibimbap (RM18.00)…

…was all right too but there was too much for the three of us to finish – we ordered two!!! Why? Well, I asked the waiter and he insisted that it was a serving for one and there would not be enough. He was rather persistent in insisting that we should order a second bowl so I relented. I guess it would be just nice for a person if one does not order anything else but we did!

The sam gyoub sal (RM12.00)…

…wasn’t anything to shout about. I may be wrong but it came across like just lightly-grilled pork marinated with salt and pepper. I would prefer crispy lettuce instead and the taucheo sure came in handy here – it did taste quite good after I put it all together and rolled everything up and ate.

The jab chae (RM18.00)…

…was so very sweet that each of us tried a little bit and basically left the whole lot on the plate.

This…

…was about the only thing that truly got our thumbs up – their gal bi tang (RM21.00). The soup was really good but unfortunately, some of the beef was so tough we just had to leave it by the side of our bowls…for fear of breaking a tooth or two!

An ex-colleague of mine was here sometime ago and he shared a photograph of what he had on Facebook. I quickly asked him how it was and he replied, “So-so! Expensive. Service is good.” I would say that I do agree with him – our bill that night came up to a whooping RM102.00 and that certainly was not cheap and what we had sure did not sweep us off our feet. Personally I do feel we could have gone for something a whole lot nicer elsewhere with that kind of money but then again, it may be because I am not really into this kind of cuisine…so perhaps, others would go for the same and like it a lot more that I did.