Showing posts with label Korean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Korean. Show all posts

CLOSED: Doma (Toronto)

Posted on Saturday, August 26, 2017 by

Doma offers an array of dishes they describe as "Korean with French inspiration or French with Korean influences". To keep things fresh, their menu changes monthly and only a few favourites from the previous month are carried forward. It’s a pretty democratic way to create a menu; as staff ask diners about their favourite dishes, the menu should be curated around the taste of customers.

Most people partake in their tasting menu where for $65 a person you try everything. In reality, for the sake of fairness, it’s really your democratic duty to sample it all so you can give a well-informed opinion on your favourite dish. If you’re not up for the task, the prices per dish have also been included in this post.

Within a short while of ordering, an amuse bouche is brought out. Being an acorn jelly, the actual jelly is neutral, so you’re greeted with a hit of spice from the finely diced kimchi and pickled onions with a slight saltiness added by the soy dashi. A refreshing summery start.


Meanwhile, the yook hwae ($18), a beef tartare that’s spiked with the spicy gochujang, is filled with flavours: of course there’s a bit of heat, but this is fairly delicate and balanced with sweet pear gel and pickled honey; black garlic aioli adds a lovely savoury creaminess. 

 The long strips of beef, instead of the customary diced pieces, takes getting used to as it’s difficult to scoop the tartare and causes the entire pile of meat to come off in one bite. Hence, you’ll need the aid of a fork and it’s best to break the rice and seaweed chips into smaller pieces to create one-bite portions. Nonetheless, the tartare tastes good and I enjoy the little pieces of cauliflower and broccoli mixed in for crunch. The chips are also kept neutral so they add texture without competing on flavours.

More than one staff member told us their grilled octopus ($20) is the sole dish that’s been on every menu since the start. In my opinion, this needs to be tweaked or retired. Sure, the slaw of cabbage, bell peppers, cucumber, pear jelly, and seaweed is good – it’s that mix of sweet, sour, and spicy flavours that’s synonymous with Korean flavours. Even the pickled grainy mustard on top really adds a pop to the salad. But then, the actual octopus, although meaty and tender is just SO sweet. If octopus can be rendered into a chewy candy, it’d resemble what Doma serves.


Instead, they should keep the sam gye tang ($24), a great rendition of the French chicken roulade where medallions of dark meat is stuffed, rolled, and then baked until the skin crisps up. The Asian flavours are brought in with the stuffing: a mix of ginseng, dates, and more meat. It’s tender and flavourful, and with a dollop of fragrant ginger and scallion paste even better. White and black fungus is added for crunch and also helps to soak up the oriental herb infused chicken veloute sauce in all its crevices. Of all the dishes, this was the greatest at amalgamating the French and Asian flavours in one plate.


If Doma doesn’t keep the uhsun mandoo ($26) forever on their menu, I’ll be seriously mad. What a seafood lover’s delight with a piece of wonderfully cooked white fish (could be pickerel), a large sweet prawn, and the best part, a mandoo, which is a Korean dumpling filled with crab encapsulated in a ravioli pasta. Each of the individual proteins already have sufficient flavours, but then you smear on onion or pea puree and the ingredients change again.


While the sweet potato rice cakes ($16) were good – a base of chewy Korean rice cakes filled with a creamy sweet potato puree - it could have been the dish that French flavours are featured more prominently. The European influence was in there with a light sprinkling of parmigian, but it didn’t really add much and everything else was more Korean focused. The tofu and pork belly ragout spooned onto the rice cakes is similar to the sweet bean paste sauce found in ja jang mein. In lieu of the ragout, it would be interesting to pair the rice cakes with a creamy sauce or replace it with a thicker beef bourguignon instead.


For being glazed in gochujang, I would have expected the pork belly ($26) to be spicier. Instead, it merely tastes sweet and savoury, especially with the grilled nectarines accompanying the dish. Overall, the flavour that was missing from Doma’s dishes is something spicy. Indeed, there was a bit of it from the kimchi in the amuse bouche, but afterwards everything else was void of the taste that is so popular in Korean cuisine. The pork belly could have been the opportunity to showcase spice, even if it was merely incorporated into a side dish with the meat. 

Nonetheless, I’m glad Doma invested in using a premium part of the pork belly where the meat and fat alternates in layers (rather than having one thick piece of each), it makes the pork belly less heavy and the flavours better-rounded.

When it came to dessert, the Korean influence flew out the window. The first dessert, an ode to corn ($10) wasn’t even French and instead best described as North American. Sweet corn ice cream is combined with salted caramel popcorn, sponge cake, and corn kernels. The sweet and salty dessert was good and the honey truffle sponge cake an interesting pulled fluffy texture. Nonetheless, it was a bit disappointing that it had nothing to do with Doma’s vision.

While the apple tarte tatin ($10) is definitely a nod in the French direction, it once again has no Korean influences (unless the country loves marshmallows). The dessert was just so sugary ... when there’s caramel sauce one doesn’t need marshmallows on top. Despite looking decent, it was just too sweet and even the fruit was overpowered.


While Korean cuisine isn’t known for desserts, there are still some notable dishes. Chewy glutinous rice creations, similar to mocha, could have been filled with fruit and topped with Chantilly cream to make a Doma appropriate sweet. With so many renditions of red bean paste encapsulated desserts (whether it be pan fried, baked, or deep fried), surely something French could have been incorporated into the pastries to give it a fusion twist.

Don’t get me wrong, with the exception of the octopus and apple tarte tatin, I was pleased with the taste of Doma’s August menu. If our waiter didn’t feel the need to explain that restaurant is known for French and Korean inspired creations, I could have just accepted the dishes as presented. But, if they really want to be known for marrying the two cultures, more dedication is required at ensuring every dish (not sure some) really showcase the spirit of each culture’s cuisine. Otherwise, it’d just be another mixed continental restaurant , which are a dime a dozen.

Overall mark - 8 out of 10


How To Find Them
 Location: Toronto, Canada
 Address: 50 Clinton Street
 

 Follow me on twitter to chat, be notified about new posts and more - https://twitter.com/GastroWorldBlog
____________________________
Gastro World's Grading System
  • Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
  • 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
  • 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
  • 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
  • 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
  • 10 - absolute perfection!

Is That It? I Want More!

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Song Cook's Authentic Korean Restaurant (Thornhill)

Posted on Sunday, January 22, 2017 by
Song Cook serves up authentic Korean cuisine and a lot of it (good luck narrowing down your order from their extensive spiral bound menu). The restaurant has an equally large dining room that’s separated into areas with regular tables or tatami sitting, if you’re in for a truly authentic experience. As a warning, the tatami tables are the real deal: there’s no hidden cut out holes so your legs can dangle, therefore a meal could really be an endurance for your core and flexibility.


Luckily, service at Song Cook is speedy, so unless you want to stay for hours, food arrives quickly after placing your order. The menu lists dishes by category (noodles, saam, rice dishes, etc.), but pay attention to the prices as some are large platters best shared amongst groups of five or more. 

Take the haemul pajun ($27.99), the seafood and green onion pancake could be mistaken for a medium pan pizza. Its sheer size allows for large chunks of octopus, shrimp, and green onion to be incorporated into the batter, which is really like an omelette with glutinous flour added for a bit of chewiness. By itself the pancake can be a bit bland, but a dip into the sweet soy sauce makes it delicious.

Another platter that feeds a crowd is the jap chae ($26.99), the warm chewy glass noodles tossed in a fragrant sesame oil soy sauce with beef and vegetables. It’s a decent version of the dish but surprisingly expensive for what you ultimately receive.  


The last of huge shared plates we tried included:
  • Tang suk yuk ($24.99), a sweet and sour chicken whose sauce, although not the vibrant red variety found in Chinese restaurants, is still flavourful. However, there’s just way too much breading on the chicken itself … really the speck of meat in the middle could be anything.

  • On the other hand, the spicy don ka su ($16.99) didn’t skimp on the meat, with the cast-iron skillet holding two long large pork cutlets. The dish is best eaten right out of the fryer, when the breading hasn’t gotten soggy from the thick spicy sauce the cutlets are smothered in. Overall, the don ka su could have been delicious (I loved the kick from the sauce), but the breading had a stale aftertaste and needed more seasoning.
 

As a warning, their grilled ssam dishes don’t actually include the lettuce wraps (for this you’ll need to add $5). The sam kyup sal consisted of three slices of relatively thick pork belly ($12.99). It lacked any flavour on its own, so really required the sweet bean paste and garlic oil that’s included on the side. Without the actual lettuce and herb garnishes the dish is pretty plain. The LA kalbi ($21.99) was better given the short ribs are marinated in a sweet garlic sauce, so is still tasty on its own. Like the jap chae, the kalbi was good, but not outstanding to warrant the much higher price compared to other Korean restaurants.


Not everything at Song Cooks is overpriced; most of their noodle and rice dishes are competitively sized and priced. I loved the chewy doughy noodles used in the ja jang myun ($8.99), but would have liked a bit more salt in the thick black bean sauce and the dish served hotter.


Their del sot bibimbap ($11.99) is fantastic with plenty of toppings and the most wonderful crispy golden crust develops where the sticky rice meets the hot stone bowl. The red bean sauce it arrives with seems spicier, so use less to begin with as you can always add more.


The ddukbokki ($8.99) is stir fried in a similar spicy sauce and intensely flavoured. It’s such a simple but satisfying dish – the logs of chewy rice cakes is addicting. To make it even more filling, we added ramen noodles ($1.00), which is great for ensuring every ounce of the spicy sauce is soaked up.


Perhaps what I like most about Song Cooks is the atmosphere … the restaurant is such a great laid-back anything-goes environment. While some establishments may give dirty looks to large rowdy tables, the staff at Song Cook join in the celebration, even demonstrating and introducing us to new drinking games. It’s that friendly attitude that makes me want to return for another order of bibimbap to wash down the 'Hulk Smash'. 

 Overall mark - 7.5 out of 10
How To Find Them
 Location: Thornhill, Canada
 Address: 72 Steeles Avenue West

 Follow me on twitter to chat, be notified about new posts and more - https://twitter.com/GastroWorldBlog
____________________________
Gastro World's Grading System
  • Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
  • 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
  • 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
  • 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
  • 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
  • 10 - absolute perfection!
Is That It? I Want More!

Other Gastro World posts similar to this:

Song Cook's Authentic Korean Restaurant Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato


CLOSED: Krazy Corean (Toronto)

Posted on Sunday, March 06, 2016 by
Krazy Corean
With a name that would irk any editor, Krazy Corean is increasing the diversity in Little Italy with their menu of Korean offerings. Their signage introduces the cuisine as fusion: although there are several blended plates, the restaurant serves a number of traditional offerings as well. Don’t worry, there’s nothing particularly “crazy” about the food, unless you count the baskets of complimentary freshly made buttery popcorn, served in lieu of bread, wild.


Of all the dishes we tried, the bul-na ($10) (bulgogi nachos) was the most crazy fusion dish. In place of typical chewy rice cakes were crispy thin warm tortilla chips. On the side, a decent pile of well-seasoned bulgogi (thinly shaved beef marinated in a sweet soy sauce), onion, broccoli and jalapeno, smothered in cheese.


The dish needed more sauce and I could have done without the small broccoli florets, which was a strange combination with nachos (bell peppers may be a better choice). Personally, I would rather have the toppings covering the tortillas to allow the flavours to meld together. There’s something about the process of searching for a chip that has the best combination of toppings that’s so satisfying – it’s almost like a treasure hunt. However, the dish is perfect for individuals who hate soggy chips and will allow people to customize the toppings on each tortilla.

Although not overly battered, the Korean style chicken wings ($8) had a nice crunch and were smothered in a tasty sweet and slightly spicy sauce. For the price, there was a fair amount of wings and each piece a decent meaty size. Pine nuts, crushed peanuts and green onion slivers top the wings providing added crunch and flavours.


I love ssam and Krazy Corean’s kalbi version ($14) was satisfying. The marinated BBQ beef short ribs were served with plenty of leaf lettuce and boiled cabbage for wrapping. Ideally, with all the vegetables, the kalbi pieces could be cut larger – two was too much to hold in the wrap but one became somewhat lost amongst the foliage. On the side, slivers of jalapeno and garlic, spicy kimchi and ssam-jang (a sweet and spicy sauce) to add into the wraps – their kimchi was crunchy and delicious. 


 Although Krazy Corean isn’t a Japanese restaurant, I thoroughly enjoyed their volcano roll ($13); my favourite dish of the evening. Inside the maki was a plethora of delicious ingredients including shrimp tempura, crab meat, avocado and cucumber. To further augment the roll, the rice was wrapped with salmon and scallop that’s then blow torched to char the protein's fat. Even the garnishes, fried lotus root slices, were fantastic … we finished every last piece.


Despite the narrow store frontage, their dining room is well laid out and the tables easily convertible to accommodate large groups. Being opened until 2am makes the restaurant popular with the late night crowd looking for drinks. Their Tokyo iced tea ($9) is a good choice; made with rum, gin, vodka, trip sec, melon liquor, lemon juice and sprite it doesn't taste alcoholic until you give it time to settle.

 Overall, if you’re looking for outrageous creations, Krazy Corean still has a ways to go. But, for reasonably priced dishes and fairly price cocktails, it’s a good choice in Little Italy. Who knows after a few Tokyo iced teas, maybe you’ll make the restaurant live up to its name after all.


Overall mark - 7 out of 10*
Disclaimer: The above meal was complimentary. Rest assured, as stated in the mission statement, I will always provide my honest opinion.
How To Find Them
 Location: Toronto, Canada
 Address: 598 College Street

 Follow me on twitter to chat, be notified about new posts and more - https://twitter.com/GastroWorldBlog
____________________________
Gastro World's Grading System
  • Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
  • 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
  • 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
  • 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
  • 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
  • 10 - absolute perfection!

Is That It? I Want More!

Other Gastro World posts similar to this:



Sariwon (Thornhill)

Posted on Sunday, April 14, 2013 by
Location: Thornhill, Canada
Address: 7388 Yonge Street
Type of Meal: Dinner

 Mentioning Korean barbeque in Toronto brings up images of all you can eat restaurants where diners cram around a small table and cook thinly sliced meat on a cast iron plate. The quality of the meat is usually subpar but the prices are cheap and food is plentiful.  Sariwon is where you can go to experience authentic Korean barbeque cooking in a comfortable environment.

Located in a retail plaza on the bottom of condo buildings, the location is surprisingly large with tons of tables and several tucked away in separate rooms.  Tables are spaced a comfortable distance away from each other so you don’t feel like you’re spying on you’re the cooking skills of your neighbours.
Sariwon serves an extensive menu with Korean non-barbeque dishes (pork bone soup, bibimbap, etc.) as well as a couple of pages dedicated to Chinese cuisine.  However, you get a sense to stay away from all these as everyone who comes generally gets their barbeque mains.  To be fair, it appears this is what they do best as the goon man doo (dumplings) ($6.95) we ordered to begin was pretty disappointing – tasteless pork filling wrapped in thin oily deep-fried dough.  It needed something more - vegetables to add some texture, sauce to give it some flavour, really anything to make it taste less like store bought frozen dumplings.

Before the mains arrived, two complimentary appetizers came first - salad with a homemade orange dressing and a vegetable omelette pancake.  Nothing that blows your mind but of course appreciated.  I particularly liked that their pancake wasn’t too doughy and had a fair amount of vegetables sprinkled throughout.

 Next came a boiling bowl of deonjang jjigae (soybean paste tofu soup) filled with cubes of tofu, slivers of vegetables, button mushrooms and pieces of octopus.  I could have just eaten that with a bowl of rice.  The savoury soup had just a hint of spice from the chilies in it and with the plethora of ingredients really became a hearty stew.

Deonjang jjigae


 Finally our mains arrived, which required a trolley to serve with the abundance of banchan (small side dishes to share) that came with it.  In total, we received eight dishes (not all pictured) including:
  • Napa cabbage kimchi
  • Cucumber kimchi
  • Some sort of pickled vegetable (radish or coyote vegetable) in a jalapeño brine
  • Spicy blanched bean sprouts tossed in sesame oil
  • Julienned fish pancakes mixed in a sweet and sour vinaigrette
  • Oyster sauce (?) stir fried peanuts
  • Julienned raw potato salad
  • Stir fried dried shrimp in a sweet soy sauce

With the exception of the dried shrimp, I liked them all.  I appreciated that the kimchi was not too fermented so the vegetables retained their crispness.  The various flavours and acidity of the dishes went well with the heaviness of the meat. 
 

For the barbeque meats, we ordered sam kyub sal (pork belly) ($18.95) and yang yum kalbi (marinated beef short ribs) ($26.95).  The pork belly wasn’t what I expected; arriving like strips of bacon except being tasteless given it hadn’t been smoked or salted.  It was bland and after cooking tasted like grilled boiled pork so I wouldn’t order again.  The kalbi was much better, tender and marinated so that it was flavourful but not overpoweringly sweet.  Additionally, it was cut to a good thickness – not too thin that it overcooked easily but also not so thick that you felt you had to gnaw at it.  
A basket of crisp romaine lettuce and a green onion soy vinaigrette salad accompanied the meats so that you could wrap them like ssam.  Each person also received a dish of sweet bean paste of peppered sesame oil to add more flavour if required.  I really enjoyed the bean paste and finished every drop of it.
Lettuce dishes


Small bowls of soojong gwa (chilled ginger-cinnamon tea) finished off our meal.  The pieces of crushed ice floating in the sweet liquid were perfect after sitting beside the heat of the grill.



Sariwon is great place to go with a group of friends if you just want to take your time having dinner.  We didn’t feel rushed and the staff generally left us alone until we called them with the button situated on the wall beside our table.  The drinks were reasonably priced; bottles of Sapporo only set us back $5 apiece.  What you end up paying is comparable with the all-you-can-eat Korean barbeque places but you’re in a more comfortable environment.  The two meat dishes was more than enough to satisfy three people and we were stuffed given the soup, salad, rice and banchan that’s also served with it.  In the future, I’ll be visiting Sariwon when I want Korean barbeque.



 Overall mark - 7.5 out of 10


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 ____________________________
Gastro World's Grading System
  • Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
  • 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
  • 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
  • 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
  • 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
  • 10 - absolute perfection!
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CLOSED: Swish by Han (Toronto)

Posted on Sunday, March 31, 2013 by
Location: Toronto, Canada
Address: 38 Wellington Street East    
Type of Meal: Dinner

 Swish by Han has a deceiving name, you may think the restaurant is German or Austrian, but in reality, is a Korean tapas restaurant.  The price points are much higher than most Korean restaurants, but most of the food is prepared to a higher caliber.  I stress the word most because not everything is better and perhaps not better for restaurants that are “known” for a particular dish, but on an overall basis is better than most. 

During this visit, we started with the sweet chili and garlic prawns ($12).  The sauce is exactly as described, sweet, a bit spicy and a kick of garlic; all great flavours.  The shrimp were deep fried and then stir fried with the sauce.  Overall, the dish was good but not amazing and lacking a Korean flare to it.  In terms of value for money, the dish definitely isn’t worth what it’s asking for.


 
The lobster “bi bim bbap” ($18), was a dish I had on our first visit and loved, so insisted we get it again.  Sadly, it wasn’t as good as I remembered.  I believe the problem stemmed from the waitress putting it down and stirring it up right away (sorry, the picture looks like a pot of mess as I wasn’t quick enough to snap a picture before the destruction began).  I understand, this is the correct way to eat it – drizzle in the thick sweet and spicy gochujang sauce then mix until all the ingredients are disbursed.  But, this also makes the deep fried lobster mushy and doesn’t give the rice a chance to develop a crispy crust on the bottom.  I would have much preferred if they just served it, explained what the customer should do and let them decide when the moment to mix is.




Our last dish was the best of this evening, the “dak kogi” (chicken) ssäm set ($25).  The teriyaki type glazed chicken is served on a hot sizzling skillet with slivers of carrots, cucumbers and onion.  To eat, you take a piece of romaine lettuce, add the ingredients, top with any condiment you like (we were given gochujang sauce, raw onion mixed in a pickled kimchi sauce), then wrap it up and ingest! My first experience having ssäm, I really liked it and would love to go back to try the beef or pork versions.   






During a past visit, I tried the Swish Seafood ($30), which is like shabu shabu or hot pot.  A small pot of broth is brought to the table along with plate of raw shrimp, mussels, vegetables and noodles.  It’s a good option for someone who doesn’t like spicy or overly strong tastes – compared to other items on their menu.  However, for someone that loves bold flavours, I found it to be pretty bland.  Plus, because you’re only cooking a few ingredients within the broth, it didn’t develop that lovely deep essence I normally associate with broth based cooking.

 Many reviews note the service here is poor, I didn’t find that to be the case.  I would say there were better servers than other – a gentleman that took our order was nice and explained everything and offered suggestions, while the lady server was a bit moody and offered one word answers (she was also the one that mixed up the bi bim bbap without asking). In the end, it wasn’t extremely friendly service but no one was overtly rude either.             

 Overall mark - 7 out of 10

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 ____________________________
Gastro World's Grading System
  • Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
  • 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
  • 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
  • 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
  • 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
  • 10 - absolute perfection!

CLOSED: Dahn (Thornhill)

Posted on Saturday, March 09, 2013 by
Location: Thornhill, Canada
Address: 8159 Yonge Street
Type of Meal: Dinner

 Dahn, a known restaurant amongst the Korean population in Toronto, is one of the few that offers a set menu.  Akin to a tasting menu, except served family style, it's popular in Korea but hardly ever offered in Toronto. Having tried the typical casual Korean dining establishments, my friends and I agreed we had to expand our palettes. So, Dahn's set menu seemed like a great way to start.

 The dinner menu costs $39.95 per person and has to be ordered by the entire table to be served. Given there are so many courses, in order to keep this review to a reasonable length, I'm going to only briefly comment on each.

 To start came a bowl of red bean porridge. Is it normal to serve something so heavy to kick off a multi-course meal?  It was very thick and its gelatinous consistency makes it very filling so I only had a couple of bites to save room. It was bland and really no depth in flavour – this is no grits from Acadia.  I would have liked it to be hotter and perhaps have a sprinkling of fresh herbs on top to wake up the dish.



We were intrigued with what the "waterly kimchi" would be.  As soon as you see it, you realize the description pretty much explains everything. The presentation lacks colour and appeal since what arrives looks like pieces of turnip in dish water. Served cold, the "broth" is essentially the preserving liquid used to marinate the radishes. The soup tastes slightly sour and salty and could be refreshing in the summer. But, not a hit at our table as it gave the impression of drinking diluted pickle juice.


The daily salad looked appealing and colourful.  But, wasn’t anything spectacular given it consisted of ice burg lettuce, grape tomatoes, mandarin segments, a homemade  blueberry dressing and oddly a single maraschino cherry.  Not being a fan of fruit based salads I wasn’t a fan of the dish but one friend found the dressing good. Personally, I felt this dish didn't add much to the experience and Dahn should consider getting rid of it and making the following course larger.


 

 The chilled bulgolgi salad was much better and one of my favourite dishes. The thinly sliced beef was well flavoured and had just the perfect amount of sweet and salty.  I loved that the marinade had micro pieces of garlic and shallots throughout.  Additionally, the crisp green beans at the bottom of the salad were unexpected and went really well with everything. I could have easily just made a meal out of this dish.


 

 Next came a dish of cold seared tuna. The fish was cooked well with a great evenly seared ring.  But, I found it very bland as there was no notable crust and too little ponzu sauce topping the tuna.  Perhaps there was a flaw in the order of serving the dishes;  I would suggest serving this mild flavour tuna before the flavourful bulgogi dish.


 

 The following japchae or Korean glass noodles was one of the best I’ve ever had.  I liked that they were less cooked so that the texture held up and didn’t cause the noodles to stick in a mound.  Additionally, the sauce had a great spicy undertone that added a little punch to the noodles.


 

 Another popular dish followed - Korean pancakes. There were two flavours chives and mungbean.
  • The chive pancake was a beautiful colour but lacked texture as there no actual pieces of chives in the batter. 
  • Meanwhile, the mung bean version was much tastier with pieces of green onion throughout and a crispier crust.
The dish needed more of the soy dipping sauce as the pancakes themselves aren’t well flavoured.  Unfortunately, we ran out of the sauce so my second pancake ended up being relatively flavourless.


 

 The deep fried marinated pollock was tasty but didn’t seem very Korean as was covered in a sweet chili thai sauce.  I liked its presentation in an edible bowl and deep frying the fish bone to add a decorative element.  Dahn gave a generous portion of fish so it was more than enough for the three of us.


 

 More fried seafood followed with shrimp and pumpkin tempura.  The batter was very crispy but was too thick for my taste.  I certainly wasn’t expecting tempura at a Korean restaurant but then remembered their cuisine is influenced by the Japanese given Korea was occupied by Japan for a while.  I would have liked if they cooked the prawns another way since we had just been served deep fried pollock.
 

 Korean barbeque followed with a platter of beef!  The assorted barbeque is a meat eater’s dream with cuts of flank steak, sirloin, short-ribs and marinated flank. The sirloin and marinated flank were definitely the highlights.  I would have like to have trade in the regular flank and short-ribs for a few pieces of kalbi instead.  I enjoyed the tradition of wrapping the beef in pieces of lettuce and topping the wrap with thinly sliced shaved onions. 


 

 After all this food you finally get to the “main”.  Here, you get to choose from three options - chilled noodle soup, hot noodle soup or nurling (some rice dish).  We thought it was a shared plate like all the other courses so opted for the chilled noodle soup as we heard it was most popular.  But, it turns out each person gets their own dish; so, we would have rather have one of each so we could see the differences. 

At first I was weary of the chilled noodles as they arrived looking like they were in the waterly kimchi broth again.  But, it was less sour, and after a few bites really started to grow on me.  The best part was the texture of the noodles – they were very different from anything I’ve ever had and had a great al dente bite.  Next time I would like to try to hot version instead as found the cold soup a bit strange.  However, the dish was a great contrast after having all the heavy fried foods and barbeque beef.
 

 The meal ends with a plate of fresh fruits (cantaloupe, strawberries and orange segments) and a choice of tea or coffee.  I opted for the traditional Korean cold tea which is prepared by brewing tea leaves with fruits, roots and other grains.  The result is a strongly flavoured beverage that doesn’t really resemble tea anymore.  Ours tasted like it was infused with mandarin orange peels and too sweet for my liking.  But, it could be that by then I was absolutely stuffed and just couldn’t handle a bite or sip of anything else!





 
I liked the restaurant itself – larger and cleaner feeling that most of the uptown Korean establishments.  Plus, they have private rooms that you can close the door at if you want some alone time with your companions.  The staff is friendly and there are so many food choices available. Their menu consists of many “favourites” (done better than most) and some more traditional offerings that I haven’t seen elsewhere.  Ultimately, I would definitely return to Dahn, albeit next time I’d just order off their a la carte menu. 




 Overall mark - 7 out of 10

Like the blog? You can now follow me on twitter for notifications - https://twitter.com/GastroWorldBlog

 ____________________________
Gastro World's Grading System
  • Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
  • 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
  • 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
  • 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
  • 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
  • 10 - absolute perfection!
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