Food: Wang Dae Bak

Food: Wang Dae Bak

There are many different type of BBQ that you would experience in your time. There is the traditional BBQ where you go to the beaches and have a nice charcoal fire and cook stuff like chicken, satay, hotdogs etc. Then there is the Thai BBQ which is also known as Mookata. Then you have the Korean BBQ. Korean BBQ is distinguished from the other type of BBQ by the style. For Korean BBQ, you will see much less sauces unlike the Chinese steamboats like in Haidilao and other steamboats in Chinatown. Korean BBQ is also distinguished by the larger meat sizes and the presence of scissors. Usually for Korean BBQ you will be able to see large meat slabs like steak, and then they will give you scissors to cut it down to size.

Wang Dae Bak is one of those Korean BBQ but Ala carte style situated in Chinatown area. There are two stores under the same name pretty close to each other but for the purpose of this review we will be talking about the one along Cross Street. The other store is along Amoy Road.

So how did the food go, read on and find out.

Charcoal BBQ. NO GAS!

The two possible location, mine was Cross st.

The menu cover. Looks premium.

Food 4.5/5

We ordered two different types of meat, rice wine, a mushroom set and also a seafood pancake for a 2 person meal.

For all patrons, similar to other Korean establishment, Korean side dishes are also provided at no additional charge and are refillable. They also give some sort of water that is not your normal tap water although for all intents and purposes it did just take like water.

The side dishes choice

The side dishes tasted pretty good, in fact one of nicest bunch of side dishes I have ever eaten from a korean restaurant. It tasted authentic and didn't taste like something just out of a pre packaged container. Nonetheless the 3 side dishes at the back, I had no clue what they were and didn't touch them at all. But since none were chargable, it's all good.

The next interesting thing about the food portion of this is that for all the hot plates, there are two sections that they will fill and refill with eggs. So depending on how cooked you like it, you can wait longer or eat them liquid. Of course just as the problem with hot plates, it will happily get stuck to the side but since its refillable its probably no issue.

Liquid egg cooking in the hot plate. Yum yum

The taste of the egg wasn't the usual also in a good sense. It tasted pretty nice as if they had added something else to it. It's a good additional touch and I didn't see this in any other korean BBQ shop.

 Before we get into the main dish proper, this was one of the other side dish that we ordered, the seafood pancake.

Note: Its more like chinese carrot cake then pan cake.

Do note, this pan cake is huge and should not be eaten by just 2 persons. Or else you will have no other room in your belly for the other dishes. That and eating too much of the same pancake also gets kinda stale in terms of the taste. This pancake size is probably meant for 4 or more people. The sauce however, was one of the nicer sauces I have eaten.

Now lets get into the main dishes. there was a good selection, from beef, pork to chicken choices with various grades and prices. The portions did seem to varies also. I honestly was surprised that the portion was so small. Take a look at the meat on the wooden holder on the top right. Yep that is one portion. The meat right one the hot pan, yep also one portion. But we will scrutinize this further later.

Ah the traditional korean BBQ meat

How it looks when it is cooked, look at the egg

Taste wise however, this would probably be one of the better tasting meat I have tasted. My general impression of korean BBQ is that the meat slabs are generally tasteless or at least are not marinated, and if I am not mistaken, these meat were not or did not seem marinated too. However, the overall taste of the meat was pleasing and I did enjoy the taste.

Rice wine and serving cup

 Let me just state clearly, I am not a wine or alcohol drinker. I think I do not have taste buds for alcohol and so far, all the alcohol that I have drunk has never tasted pleasing to me in the end. Nonetheless, at least the presentation is cute for this rice wine and all in all, I did not factor this into the rating to be fair.

 Overall, the food has a premium taste to it and it is generally better then that you get outside. Also the no fuss choices and variety that it has to cater for tastes and budget. You will probably go home thinking that this meat is indeed a step above the usual.

Atmosphere 3.5/5

Charcoal. They mean it.

Like what was said in their name card, they proudly proclaim that their food is cooked by charcoal and I am compelled to believe that cooking with charcoal does add some difference to its taste. This adds to the overall enjoyment of the food. Wait! what are you asking? Does the charcoal make you smell?

Go away charcoal smell!

Thankfully, there is this nifty device that i am sure you seen before in other restaurants to help you in this aspect. Actually, in the end, I still did smell of charcoal although I would have to say that the suction device probably did help me slightly. So if you plan to come here to eat, make sure you are prepared to go back directly after, or you concoct some way to remove the smell after.

Water???

Here was the water that  I was talking about early. Free flow, but its not transparent. With the korean words in front it would seem that this might not jsut be like water, although it tastes more or less the same thing. Nonetheless, adds to the korean experience.

Service wise, the personnel here are fine, and will respond IF you managed to get their attention. However it seems like their store might have been slightly understaffed on that day and the staff were focused on getting tasks done, so there would be some bit of effort that you will need to put in to get them. But once you get them, they will attend promptly and solve your problems

Another additional perk was towards the end of our meal, the staff (might have been boss) placed a bowl of veggie / cold dish veggie on our table. I had no clue what it was but it was not charged and I guess was just a token of appreciation from the kitchen. (or we were just guinea pigs testing out new food) Unfortunately, we were too full, (I repeat again do not buy the pancake if you are just two people) and we didn't have the stomach to try it.

Personal space is pretty good and you won't feel like you are too near other people's table during your meal. They even allow you to keep your bags in the chair you sit on! So the only way your things get stolen is OVER MY FAT BODY! Or if you just forget to take it back cause its out of sight and out of mind.

Price 3/5

This part is basically the deal breaker. This place is not a place I would consider cheap. For two pax we ate about SGD $110 for 2 types of meat, 1 mushroom set, 1 seafood pancake and 1 rice wine. If we were to factor out the rice wine which is about 20 dollars it would be 90 for 2 people which is 45 per pax. My only issue is that the meat amount is really low as you saw in the food section. For some reasons, the other meat choices that we saw were served, seemed to have a larger portion then ours but at the end, we didn't feel like we ate enough of the meat and for some reason felt like we had to ration our way through.

We did not order more meat because the seafood pancake (again) was a killer and it made us well stuffed. So you know what to do with the pancake... Nonetheless, it was good that the side dishes, water and egg were not charged which makes the place seem less greedy overall.

Accessibility 3/5

With it's location near a MRT station near the central of the country, it is safe to say that this place is quite accessible. There are a few parking lots nearby and you can always call to book places (in fact i would recommend u do that). Do note that when we ended our meal around 7, there was already a crowd building. The good point about ala carte BBQ is that people will not stay as long, but still, being a small place and even two people groups will take out their common table that can sit up to 4, it might take you awhile to get to your seat if you come too late. The waiting area is also outside and you can see other people eating so it will be hot and slightly torturous. Do plan properly and maybe just save yourself the hassle and book.

Do note that the place is not entirely easy to find and even from the MRT you will need to walk a little more then 5 minutes to get there. Chinatown MRT is generally getting a bit more messy and harder to navigate in the recent years

Overall

Food: 4.5 (Food definitely tastes premium, pricey and nice)

Atmosphere: 3.5 (Good attempt with some hiccups or places to improve, but it will not frustrate you so it is somewhat acceptable)

Price: 3 (Premium taste comes with premium price, and somewhat small portion at least to me)

Accessibility: 3 (Near the MRT, there are parking lots but there will be the queue. At least you can reserve it. Try to go only after you did reservations)

Overall: 3.5 (It's a good place to try once in your life to have an idea of how authentic korean BBQ should taste like although the price you pay is somewhat more steep. All in all a place you should go at least once in your life to try, and if you think that the price and taste is there, you can come more often. In my opinion however, this will be a place more reserved for those rare special occasions and not a place you will select to go on a whim or a craving.)

Thanks again for reading my post. Hope you guys find this place useful. If you have other recommendations please comment and I may take a look at them when I am thinking of places to go!

Food: Han Ka Ram Korean Restaurant

Food: Han Ka Ram Korean Restaurant

Occasionally, you will find yourself in a strange place, unfamiliar, hungry, and with no willpower to move on, the need to just find a place that doesn't have a long queue and can keep you alive for a while longer takes over the need to find famous places that you can discover on the internet or on other review sites.

This is one of those places. The original intent was to go to eat at Mad for Garlic at International plaza, but upon seeing the long wait time due to the small size of the shops, we decided to just explore nearby and found this quaint little place.

I would expect that this place is well known to those working in the Tiong Bahru area but to those who are like me who work miles away, here's a review to help you decide whether you should make this trip and would it be worth it!

This place is located in B1 of the AXA tower and is a pretty small place. So what food we have here?

Here is the menu

Has a pretty reasonable variety ranging from the Bibimbap to the noodles to the soups and the rice cooked with meat. Its pretty good with a fair choice of meat.

Their set meal

They even have a set dinner promotion and at $35 nett it is a pretty reasonable spread. We got the Beef Deopbap set and the following are the pictures

The 3 side dishes

There are alot of other more expensive Korean restaurants that sell unlimited servings of side dishes, but here you are entitled to 3 (or is it 6) side dishes. They probably just meant 3 types of side dishes. Overall tasted pretty fine for a side dish, but it is not hard to go wrong with this.

Haemoel Pajeon or seafood pan cake

Here was the appetizer that we got. It was between this and some fried meat with veg. It was a reasonably big portion and tasted pretty good. It's not the best pan cake that I have eaten but it was at least crispy and tasted pretty nice.

Beef Deopbap

WHY IS THERE THAT P  inside!! deo-p-bap!!! so hard to pronounce. But this was easily the best korean meat I have eaten. It was even served in the a hot bowl to keep it nice and hot while we ate. And it was not burnt and stuck to the bowl either. The beef was nicely marinated. Only qualm was that there was so much more beef then rice. There was also an egg inside. Because of the lack of rice though, I personally thought it was not going to be filling.

KalbiTang

This was the beef ribs soup that we ordered with such a cute name! KALBI TANG! see it even sounds like mandarin! Tang!! I always knew i could speak korean. Either way, i counted 4 chucks of meat in total which is ok.... but the plus point was the meat was perfectly soft. Not over cooked, not under. Just nice. And served on the hot bowl again meant that the soup stayed hot. The soup tasted fine also and wasn't like too salty or MSG soup or anything like that

Overall, the taste of the food is up there, add to it the variety because you can choose any other type of soup as well as different types of meat. Like I said earlier, the food overall was just almost filling thanks to the pancakes but there could have been a bit more rice given or meat put into the soup.

Food 4/5

Atmosphere 4/5

It was a really quaint place, small, but it was well spaced out with a TV showing korean singing or korean MTV.  Not really a fan of that because they all look the same to me but its there! There was only one single girl staff doing the waitress but she really really really looked like she was working very very hard. I would even say she managed to do the job of 2 waitresses with the same level of professionalism.

She also showed some extra care when she actually directed us to change our seats to a 4 persons seat even though we were only two people to our confusion. After being confused for a while, we finally found out that because we ordered the set meals, it would be more comfortable to eat given a bigger table space. Its this kind of additional touch that made this place stand out.

Still, for one single staff it is hard for her to keep this up so they would have gotten more points should there be a bit more hands on deck.

Price 3.5/5

37.00 SGD for 2!

My impression when I eat korean food is that it is usually pretty expensive. Usually above 40 dollars. For this place however, we had a full meal complete with appetizer and even drinks at 37 dollars. Its cheap. 

Still being the cheapskate that I am, I would say it was almost at the 4 mark if they had put in a bit more rice into the rice bowl! I felt that more of the fillingness came actually from the pancake as compared to the rice and meat itself which was slightly a waste. 

Accessibility 4/5

Note the opening and closing times

Note that this place is not open on weekends at all!! NOT OPEN ON WEEKENDS! They should though.. if they had a branch else where. However, like many shops in the raffles place/tanjong pagar area... its closed during weekends. Nonetheless when we were there it was about 7 pm and we finished at 8 pm. The place was filled, but there was no queue outside or at best a 1 to 2 group queue. I suppose this place might be crowded during the weekdays itself given its good price and location in the office area.

If going for dinner however, a weekday dinner that is, it is veryveryvery near the Tanjong Pagar MRT exit. Less then 50 meters so it is easy to go if needed and with no visible queue, this is a place to try out. Anyway the number is over there in the name card so just give them a call if you wanna check it out!

Overall

Food: 4 (The taste is definitely there. It tastes authentically korean we were wondering if the chef was korean. Its nice and has good variety for you and your eating group)
Atmosphere: 4 (Good staff, could be more, but space is well utilized and spaced out)
Price: 3.5 (Drinks are included into a NETT price. Definitely cheap for korean food standards)
Accessibility: 4 (Easy to get there and IN there. Only qualm is no where else to go after)

Overall: 3.875 (A worthy high score pushed up because of good food and good service. A place you should consider going if you want a korean food fix. Also won't burn a hole in your pocket so you will feel pretty comfortable and content after.)

This place has no website but I believe the picture of the menu should help you know what to expect. Any readers who are from that Raffles Place/Tanjong Pagar area that eaten there before? Let me know your views!!