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!!