Greatest Fast Food Chain Ever?

Koryo Korean BBQ
Level 4 - 317 7 Ave SW

The situation: You are power shopping at the local mall. Hunger strikes. You head to the food court to find a plethora of greasy fast food chains. Do you want the double quarter pounder with cheese? Or do you want the two item combo at Tiki Ming?

The solution? Neither of those. What you really want is the chicken and beef combo at Koryo Korean BBQ. For a mere $7.99 + gst, one can get an impressive helping of BBQ beef and chicken. Two choice of sides and two scoops of rice plus a drink! Who can say no to that? Fantastic deal. There is a wide variety of sides to choose from. They all look and taste amazing but what you want to get is the garlic potatoes. Smothered in a thick sweet honey garlic sauce, the potatoes are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. They are awesome. I’m drooling all over my computer right now. Get it. It'll change your life. Also, when the guy ask you if you want the sauce, the answer is yes.

You may be asking "But David, the mall I'm at doesn't have a Koryo!" Well then, you, my friend, is shopping at the wrong mall. Do some research before you leave next time. 


No ratings for this post. Sorry Steph.  

Our Little Secret

Sura Korean Restaurant

2320 4 St NW

Located in the north west community of Mount Pleasant, Sura is a quiet little restaurant serving up quality Korean dishes. Mount Pleasant is not exactly known for their partying culture. There's a pub across the street but the streets ain't hoppin' on a Saturday night. We arrived half pass noon to find 2 occupied table and no staff in sight. A few minutes go by before someone emerged from the kitchen to seat us. They then promptly returned to the kitchen to prepare the meals of the other diners. I got up to grab a menu. Service was severely lacking. A few minutes later, a frazzled woman burst through the doors. It was the waitress, I guess she was late or something. She quickly gathered herself to take our order and answered my millions of questions and giving us great advice like "You don't want that one. This is more authentic," and "The portions are pretty big so it should be enough but you can always take it home right?"

Upon placing our order, a million (slight exaggeration) banchan (side dishes) were brought out for us to nibble on. I will now attempt to give you the low down on each one.

Alright, starting with what I know -

Kimchi - A traditional fermented Korean dish. Usually consist of cabbage and pretty much used in everything. Soup, stew, rice, the whole shabang. I'm not a super huge fan on kimchi (And yet I'm eating at a Korean restaurant. It's crazy! Right?), but I had some anyway. It was okay. Not too spicy.

Going in a clockwise direction, we have Gaeran Mari (I'm not totally sure of these names, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in the comments below). A rolled omelette with green onion and ham grilled to a golden brown colour and cut into the half inch wide wedges. Super tasty. It's a shame there was only two of these.

Next up, we have Kongnamul which is soybean sprouts. And some seasoning. Annnnnd that's it. Simple but delicious. Not spicy. Thumbs up to that.

Continuing on, we have the marinated fish cake. I have no idea what this is called. In fact, I didn't even know what it was until I asked our knowledgable waitress. I'm glad I did because I probably would have described it as "some marinated strips of stuff with green onion sprinkled on top" (Mad street cred would have been lost! Probably go into the negative). It didn't taste like chicken that's for sure. The fish cake was quite soft and squishy. Very flavourful.

On a side note, does anyone know what fish cake is made out of? It's probably something along the lines of 2% fish, 8% fish parts and 90% other stuff. Did I mention it was tasty? Because it was extremely tasty. Not to discourage anyone with all that talk of fish parts or anything. Just sayin'.

Next up, we have the sigumchi namul which is seasoned spinach. Nothing too fancy about this dish.

Mu namul is julienned daikon or white radish in a sweet vinegar sauce. It is then seasoned with some cucumbers and black sesame seeds. The daikon was really crispy. A little vinegary but pretty tasty.

Oh man... I can't believe I'm only on side dish number 6. I feel like I've been typing for an eternity. Alright, number 7. Myulchi Bokkeum. This little dish consisted of dried anchovy seasoned to perfection with sesame seeds sprinkled on top. Super crispy. Very flavourful. Probably one of my favourites out of the gazillion side dishes we got.

And to round out the side dishes, we have this bean type dish (More street cred lost). I'm not too sure what type of bean this is. Despite being fairly hard, it was pretty decent. The sauce was very flavourful.

So there you have it! All the side dishes we got to try. It's almost like a full meal right there. By the time I was done taking picture of all the banchan, the main dishes began to arrive. Here is a shot of everything with our seaweed soup. The soup was pretty amazing. Very light, refreshing. The wakame didn't have the nasty taste of the sea to it. There was two token mussels for additional flavouring for the soup. It is interesting to note that the soup came out in a very shallow bowl. It was really difficult to scoop up every last drop of this delicious soup.

The first official entree to arrive was the seafood pa jeon. Pa jeon is a Korean style pancake made from an egg, flour and green onion batter. Our pa jeon had giant chunks of seafood (Shrimp and squid? Or maybe octopus). Grilled to perfection, the aroma of green onions filled the air when it was brought out. Super crispy with a spicy dip for that extra kick. Sooooo delicious. And massive too, about the same size as a medium pizza. 

This was followed quickly by the dolsot bibimbap. This put the wannabe bibimbap I had at Cafe HK to shame. The rice was sizzling in the intense heat of the stone bowl. The rice is topped with zucchinis, carrots, mushrooms, soybean sprouts, spinach, marinated beef and onions placed in equal "quadrants" (Yes I'm aware there are 7 things) with a sunny side up egg in the middle. Depending on how crispy you want your rice, you can either eat it right away for a softer texture or wait till it gets super crispy. I mixed a little bit of everything together along with a small dab of hot sauce. Soooo amazing! The light flavours of all the toppings complimented each other really well. The rice was crispy on the outside and soft inside.

There's also a complimentary soup which I did not get a picture of (The seaweed soup was better). There was so much food but we were still managed to finish most of it. Only half a pa jeon left by the time we were finished which we got packed up (Those who know me will know this is a big deal as I hardly get leftovers packed up, but it was amazing!). Our waitress was impressed. But not impressed enough to offer us a free meal unfortunately. Not that it was super expensive anyway. In fact, I thought it was a pretty amazing deal. We normally spent almost twice that for lunch. Wicked deal!

The scores:

Service - 6 out of 10. Service was pretty slow initially. For the longest time there was only the lone chef in the back cooking and bringing the food out. 

Atmosphere - 9 out of 10. Lots of room. Very spacious. Unlike Seoul Korean BBQ. 

Food - 10 out of 10. AMAZING!

Cost - 9 out of 10. Only $37 + Tip. I had to double check my bill just to make sure I didn't read it wrong.

Overall - 8 out of 10. Don't be telling everyone. This is our little secret. 

Update: We went again this week for dinner and it was just as amazing! Check out these sweet pics!


First up with have the beef hot pot.

Bulgogi (Korean BBQ) Trio- A combo of beef ribs, chicken and pork.

Ginseng Chicken.

Service Optional

Cafe HK
100 - 9650 Harvest Hills Blvd NW

Went to Cafe HK for lunch last weekend (2 weekends now. Been super busy). Cafe HK is located on the other side of T.Pot (Hang a right when you enter the door. Can't miss it. Literally). Normally, I get the wonton noodles when I go but decided to switch it up that day. I tried ordering a couple of things but they seem to have stopped making them. Probably a good idea to update the menu. It's not like they have an extensive menu anyway! Compared to Calgary Court and Sun Chiu Kee, or even Pebble Street, the options at Cafe HK is severely lacking. And they are all owned by the same people!

Anyway, I ended up having the bibimbap because I was craving it from the day before. Seasoned barbecued beef topped eggs over rice and veggies. The barbecue sauce was likely from T & T next door. In fact, I think my mom has a jar of it at home. It's really good, kind of sweet. Mmmmmm... The veggies? Not so much. It had a funny taste to it. It wasn't a pickled or kimchi taste. Just a funny one. The stone (read: ceramic) bowl is coated with an oil (possibly of the sesame variety) before the rice is placed to make the rice super crispy and golden brown. That's the idea anyway. What ended up happening was the bottom layer touching the bowl got completely burnt. How unfortunate. 5 out of 10 stars. I should really get cracking on these reviews... But I'm so lazy... : (

'Spooners Unite.

San Dong Banjeom
#14 3803 26th Ave SW

Went out to dinner with some 'spooners after work last Friday (Urbanspooners that is). I was a little nervous about meeting a group of random people at first. For those who actually know me, I'm a little (Read: REALLY) shy. Definitely glad I did though. Everyone was really cool and definitely very knowledgable on different types of cuisines and culinary things. And then there was me. Yay for food!

San Dong Banjeom is not what you'd expect at a Korean restaurant. There's no bbq (sad face), no seafood hot pot (double sad face), bibimbap (more sad face). I later found out that it was Korean inspired Chinese food. Fusion, if you will. In the grand scheme, it was pretty good. Score to come later (Or you can scroll to the bottom if you can't bear the suspense).

So anyway, each person ordered one dish to share. I quickly skimmed through the menu and declared that my pick was number 51. Not sure if this has happened to any of you, but whenever I'm slow to choose a dish to share, all the good ones that I want get picked and I'm stuck with lame choices like steamed vegetables and something. Number 51 was beef with 5 kinds of spices. Check it. There was much debate when it arrived (first) as to what part of the cow it came from. There was some talk of organs but I'm pretty sure it's beef shank. My mom makes this all the time. I should know. Not with 5 spices though. Well... maybe. It's kind of in the sauce. Anyway, the 5 spices consisted of garlic, jalapeno, fish sauce, white scallion and some sort of chilli oil drizzled on top. The meat was propped up with chopped cucumbers underneath. It was a cold plate, not really what I had expected, but pretty decent.



Next to arrive was this fried pork strips(?) dish. Unfortunately I was not able to snap a photo of it in its undisturbed state as the waitress took a giant scope of it to split it onto a second plate. You will have to rely on my vague descriptions. Quarter inch wide slices of pork were fried like chicken strips and served with some stir-fry veggies. It was one of my favourite dishes of the night.

Next up was the japchae which is a stir-fry with various vegetables and cellophane noodles. Taste wise, it was decent but I thought it was a little watery.



Food began piling up as we were not able to keep up. At one point, I was holding on to a plate while I ate, with additional plates on the bench beside me. Next to arrive was a chicken dish. Nothing too spectacular.



The deep fried prawns with mayo sauce arrived next. Decent. Best part: The shell at the tail was removed. Ever had tempura shrimp with the tail not removed? (Of course you have, it's never removed) It's as annoying as hell. Precious batter wasted! Not the case here. Not particularly known for their use of mayo, this may be the least Korean/Chinese dish of the night.



After much anticipation, the chicken with yurin sauce arrived. It was definitely the butt of many jokes of the night. I tried looking up yurin sauce on google and wikipedia and was not able to come up with anything useful. Shout out in the comments below if you know what it is! The chicken was coated with a thin layer of batter and fried. Despite of this, it was still very tender. The dish was finished with chopped scallions and yurin sauce.



The jajangmyeon arrived shortly after. The noodles were really goopy so it was really difficult to pick up. I had to resort to the spaghetti twirl with the chop sticks. If only I had a spoon and fork, then I'd be able to impress everyone with my sweet tong skills. And for some strange reason, we got two plates worth of it... lots left over. Literally two boxes of it.



The noodle soup thing was the last to arrive. This proved to be even more difficult to pick up. Soup was splashing everywhere, it was a disaster. After struggling for 5 minutes, we opted to have the waitress distribute to 8 bowls. I was a little skeptical of the soup at first as it looked really spicy but it was actually not that spicy at all. Or I may have lost all feeling in my mouth from all the other dishes. Either way, it was pretty good.



I was definitely disappointed there was no bbq but it was pretty decent overall. 6 stars out of 10.