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Showing posts with label Korean. Show all posts

Thursday, February 26, 2015

A Meal in Brief: Hansik 한식

We came here because we were in the vicinity of Victoria Park Market, and Hansik was the newest kid on the block. Also, despite the beautiful brickwork and classy decor (betrayed by the hand-written blackboard sign at the entrance announcing "Oriental food & drinks"), the prices looked reasonable.

Sign for Hansik at entrance.

The menu was large, with the usual Korean dishes like bibimbap and soft tofu spicy soup (both $18), as well as more fusion offerings like kimchi tacos and salmon tartar (both $15).

The menu had embossed Korean writing on the cover.

The setting was cool and spacious, with exposed brick walls and a smooth concrete floor, as you may remember from the days when this was the Caribbean restaurant Atico Cocina. It still has the large bar area in the middle of the room, but with some more Korean decorations scattered around. From the balcony, you can see the works above the Victoria Park Market carpark, where they are building apartments.

The service was friendly but a bit uncertain, as you might expect from a restaurant that is only two weeks old. A waitress (wearing a badge of "Trainee") tried to tell us which dishes could be made vegetarian, but wasn't too sure. She checked that the vegetarian could eat egg though. When we had food left over, they packed it for us in the kitchen, with some expensive-looking dark-coloured bamboo disposable chopsticks. The music was non-existent, then suddenly too loud (and not really fitting with the venue).

What we ate included:

Complimentary side dishes, or banchan (반찬) - this included japchae (잡채, glass noodles stir-fried in sesame oil with vegetables), two types of kimchi (one with Chinese cabbage and one with daikon), a Korean potato salad (감자샐러드) with apple and mayonnaise, and marinated boiled eggs called jangjolim (장조림). All were delicious.

Complimentary side dishes.

Hansik's 17 herbs and spices beef spare ribs ($18) - this was served with a side of rice (cooked with potato and sprinkled with black sesame seeds), and was hot and flavourful. We wondered whether the raw onions and spring onions at the bottom of the dish were supposed to keep cooking, but liked it anyway.

Hansik's 17 herbs and spices beef spare ribs.

Spicy pork kimchi tacos ($15) - we didn't know what to expect with this, but it was indeed tacos, with soft tortillas topped with a mix of vegetables and segments of boiled eggs in addition to the meat. We didn't see any kimchi, so it must have been mixed into the sauce. Not a combination we are used to, but it worked.

Spicy pork kimchi tacos.

Kimchi fried rice ($15) - the vegetarian asked for this without bacon, and it came served with an omelette instead, which was still moist on the inside. The fried rice itself was cooked with various pickled vegetables, which made it taste fragrant and quite different from the kimchi in the side dishes.

Kimchi fried rice.

Overall, we greatly enjoyed our lunch at Hansik. The food was beautifully presented, fresh and vibrant, skilfully cooked, and filling (despite looking like small portions on the large plates, there was a reasonable amount of food, not to mention the side dishes). We would be keen to return to try more from their varied menu!

Restaurant Details

Hansik
19 Drake Street, Auckland Central
(09) 930 0055

Sunday, July 6, 2014

A Meal in Brief: Pocha

We came here because we had a craving for chicken and hof—Korean-style fried chicken and beer.

What does Pocha mean? Pocha is short for pojangmacha (포장마차), which literally means "covered wagon", and refers to a street food vendor.

The menu was large, but everything was bar food for sharing. Rather than individual Korean dishes with rice or noodles and a selection of side dishes, here you'll find platters of deep-fried things, meats (raw, grilled or fried), savoury pancakes, and soup. There was a distinct lack of vegetables, let alone anything vegetarian, unless you count the sweet fruit dishes, buttered corn, edamame, or the leaves in the beef tataki.

Menu with smoking cat.

The setting was suitable for a bar in the Chancery: dim with fairy lights. There is an outdoor area full of smokers, in line with the picture of a smoking cat which appears on the menu, and with the pictures of a smoker inside.

Pictures of a smoker.

The service was friendly but hands-off. After ordering, we were given a pile of spoons, disposable chopsticks, and serviettes, but no individual bowls, which made sharing the free spicy soup difficult. Also, we would have liked to have seen serving spoons arrive with each dish, and maybe a knife for the pancake.

Cutlery and free soup.

What we ate included:

fried corn with butter sauce (콘버터, $12) - this was nice, no doubt due to copious amounts of butter and mayonnaise. Also, it was basically the only vegetables we had for the whole meal.

Fried corn with butter sauce.

stir fried rice cake in spicy sauce with melted cheese on top (치즈떡볶이 chijeu tteokbokki, $28) - apart from the chewy rice tubes (떡 tteok) and chilli sauce (고 추 장 gochujang), this also had cabbage, instant noodles (라면 ramyeon), and rectangular pieces of fish cake (어묵 eomuk). You'll need to like spicy sauce to order this.

Stir fried rice cake in spicy sauce with melted cheese on top.

deep fried chicken (후라이드 치킨, $30), half and half (반반 banban) of each type: plain salt and pepper, and marinated with sweet and spicy sauce (양념 yangnyeom). This came with pickled radish cubes, chilli slices, and salt and pepper. Not the best we have had, but it's still crispy fried chicken.

Fried chicken with pickled radish cubes, chillis and flavoured salt.

chives pancake (부추전 buchujeon, $25) - apart from Asian chives, this had squid and onion, and came with a soy-vinegar dipping sauce. This was freshly-cooked, so warmly welcomed.

We had more than enough food for six people, and ended up taking a couple of boxes away.

Overall, Pocha is not really a foodie destination, but when you want a bit of Korean flavour while sharing something cheapish and greasy in the central city, this could fit the bill.

Restaurant Details

Pocha
50 Kitchener Street, Chancery Square, Auckland Central
(09) 309 2342

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Review: Faro (화로), Newmarket

The best, and perhaps only, modern Korean BBQ restaurant we knew of was Faro in town, and I'd been meaning to write about it for a while. We were therefore excited to hear that a new branch opened just over a week ago in Newmarket, where HP8 on Nuffield Street used to be. Not only that, there were new items on the menu, including sesame leaf rolls!

We headed off immediately to try this new venue out. It seemed to be less dark than the Faro in town, and tables were partitioned off to give a sense of privacy. There was also an area to the right that could accommodate larger groups. Otherwise, it was much the same, with a grill ring in the middle of the table for you to BBQ your food, a button on the side of the table for summoning your waiter (common to Korean restaurants) and a pipe which you can adjust to hang above your grill, for extracting the smoke from your cooking.

Extraction pipes hung above each booth.

Floor seating for a larger group.

After perusing the menu for some time, we decided to go for a selection of entrees, as well as getting some meat and veg for the grill. We also opted to try a rice dish with radish greens called shiregi (시래기영양밥), and were mildly surprised when the outgoing waitress suggested that it would taste "healthy" and that she wouldn't recommend it. The vegetarian had had enough of bibimbap (비빔밥) though (mixture of vegetables, optionally with egg and/or meat, on rice, served with a fermented chilli sauce, which seems to be the safest vegetarian option), so we ordered the shiregi rice despite the warning.

Our entrees came first, the stir-fried peanuts labelled kong (땅콩무침) to begin with, then the sesame ssam with rice (깻잎밥). And here I have to digress...

Sesame ssam: rice and black sesame seeds wrapped with a pickled perilla leaf.

While I was looking up the Korean for this dish, I discovered that kkaenip ssam (깻잎쌈) is actually a wrap with a perilla leaf, not sesame, the common mistranslation. I confirmed this with a Korean friend:

Perilla is correct. Because both perilla and sesame seeds are used in the Korean cuisine in similar (but distinct) manners, one word, '깨', refers to both.

참깨 ('true' 깨) refers to sesame, usually more expensive, used as garnish or to get sesame oil (참기름, or 'true' oil)

들깨 ('field' or 'wild' 깨) refers to perilla, used for flavouring soups, or making oil (들기름), which is used as marinade or dressing for vegetables.

Because the word '깻잎' simply means the 'leaf of 깨', not many Korean people would know which one it refers to. But the correct answer is perilla :)

Yay. So we seem to have eaten a green version of what is growing in my garden. It was a bit soft and fibrous, quite unlike the crisp and juicy feeling you would expect with a lettuce leaf, though perhaps not so different from a stuffed vine leaf in Greek or Turkish cuisine.

A couple of dishes from the Dinner Special page came out shortly after this (though they still looked like entrees to me): stuffed chillis called gochu jeon (고추전) and chicken on fried tofu, or dubu dak (두부닭).

Dubu dak and gochu jeon.

Then came the food for the grill, along with the usual Korean side dishes. Each person was given two varieties: the pickled onion and a daikon salad. We also had four larger bowls to share between the table, which contained kimchi, a green salad, a white jelly made of mung bean starch, and a sliced soy egg. When we polished them off, they were later replaced by battered courgette slices and a mung bean salad.

Marinated boneless beef rib fillets, fresh cut top blade, marinated chicken with hot hot hot sauce, and side dishes.

I guess the thing about cooking your own dinner is that you've only got yourself to blame if it's burnt or otherwise suboptimal. When the bars on the grill got black and sticky, a waiter would come rushing up to replace it for you, so vegetarians don't even need to worry about contaminated cookware. Our marinated meats were good, but we could have done with some salt for the plain one. Thinking back afterwards, they must have just forgotten to give us the sauces they'd advertised on the cover of their menu, which were supposed to be:

Galbi-Jang: best with marinated beef
Roast Salt: best with fresh beef & pork
Ssam-Jang: best with vegitable wrap

Marinated beef rib fillets on the grill.

You can also grill vegetables, though they were quite dry and tended to burn easily. The tomato, in particular, wanted to disintegrate and stick to the grill. Again, these could really have done with some sauce.

Grilling vegetables.

Finally, we received the shiregi rice, which was the $17 bowl of grains that the waitress had tried to dissuade us from. Yes, it did taste healthy, but it was also delicious. I would have liked it more if it had had more radish greens, and where was the chilli paste mentioned in the menu? It was also served with a decidedly unvegetarian soup: we found a prawn, some little clams and dried shrimps in the doen jang soup (된장찌개), which had tofu and vegetables in the soybean base as well.

Shiregi rice with doen jang soup and soy sauce.

We were so full after all this that we unfortunately had no room for desserts. We were happy pandas after a fun and pleasant meal. Although some of the food was bland, partly due to the missing sauces, this was no doubt due to the fact that the restaurant had opened less than two weeks ago, and we look forward to coming back when these mistakes will have been sorted out.

Panda Recommends

Mains: something off the grill menu ($11 - $13). This is a Korean BBQ restaurant after all. Don't forget (as we did) to ask for your sauces.

Vegie Pandas
Unlike the menu from Faro in town, the vegetarian options are not clearly marked here. There are a number of beautiful entrees which you could order, as well as a plate of vegetables to grill, or go for the default option of vegetarian bibimbap (비빔밥).