Belated Birthday Celebration

First, I would like to say... I hate blogspot's photo uploads/posting...

That being said, on goes with the blog!

I know I've been blogging mainly about beauty stuff (and some shoes), but you'll all learn soon that I have a very broad spectrum of interests, and amongst them, food is one of them. Although I rarely go out to eat cause the cost is just too high. On this rare occasion though (my birthday), we (we as in, brother, cousin, cousin's wife, and friend of theirs, plus me) decided to head to a Korean restaurant (cuz I haven't had Korean in forever, and have been craving it for a while now).

Originally, we were heading some where else (there were two other choices), but because of Father's day (I think) both restaurants were booked up. I did some google-ing and came up with this restaurant. There were only 3 reviews, but all positive (one of them said the food was like granny's home made food), so I though why the hell not, give it a try. So I called them, expecting that it will also be fully booked, and I will have to run down the google list until I find another one. But they were not! When I called, a guy answered in Korean, with a very long phrase that I can never repeat. I spoke to them in English (obviously, I ain't Korean). The guy spoke in Korglish, which I thought was a very good sign.

A word of warning, most of the pictures were taken after we've had some of the food, because I am not very good at remembering to take pictures before the food is touched (haha). Also the following pictures may induce uncontrollable drooling. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!

We parked our car in the back of the restaurant, as soon as we opened the car door, the BBQ meat smell came at us like a boxer's punch, it smellllllled sooooooo gooooood.

The name of the restaurant is funny to me for some reason, I would never have guessed it was a Korean restaurant (aside from the Korean BBQ in front of it), but I suppose that's the same for many many MANY Chinese restaurants (something something Garden).

The service of this restaurant was actually pretty decent, the server took the time to talk to us, introduced some foods that we could try when we asked them, and did not look annoyed when we called for him, but we had not fully decided what we wanted (which was our bad). The food came quickly (probably cuz most of it was raw), and they even helped us put the first few pieces on the hot plate. They were also very quick to change the hot plate when it got black from the cooking. The owner (or I think the owner) would walk around and service the tables, she had limited English, but was very nice.

If anyone is interested:
5599 Kingsway in Burnaby
604-431-0208


The main store sign was actually in Korean, I have no idea what it says, but I am ganna guess it says Potter's Garden (lol)


One thing special about this restaurant, they have a call bell, so you press the button, and servers will come and ask you what you need, which eliminates the need for the servers to come and ask you while you have food in your mouth (which ALWAYS happens, I think they are trained to wait for your mouth to be full). The piece of paper (with green grass on it) in the top right corner of the picture is also something I've never seen. It's a cover slip for the spoon. The spoons are regular Korean style spoon (I don't know if they are, but I see them at all the Korean restaurants, so I assumed LOL) and they are reusable. I assume after they wash it, they put it into those slip covers so they can remain clean.


Here are all the small dishes that all Korean restaurant gives out for free. I love the sweet potato, but others said the juice didn't get soaked in enough. The seaweed and bean sprouts were ok, nothing too special. The kimchi was sooo goooooood, it was spicy, but a good spicy, haven't had such spicy kimchi in a while. 


The mandatory, meat smoking on metal plate shot. We ordered a combo for 5 to 6 people, and then ordered 3 other side dishes, we were FULL, and we had left overs. I didn't take a picture of all the raw food, and I actually am not sure what they are, cuz I didn't make the decision haha. But all the meat was marinated sooo well, they gave us a plate of sauce to add flavour I guess, but I didn't use it for the meat at all.


We did a side order of a bibimbap. Here's a picture of it, mixed, because I forgot to take a picture of it's unmixed form, it looks yummier in it's unmixed form, but the look does not change the taste. This was my favourite item, and that says a lot, since I am not a big fan of rice. I love the rice that gets cooked till crispy (the one against the walls of the bowl). The bibimbap also came with a small bowl of soup, which I did not take picture of, but it was very good nonetheless. It was just a simple broth with nothing in it, I think it's to wash away the flavours that's already in your mouth so you can enjoy the bibimbap more. It was sweet and not overpowering, best soup I've had at a Korean restaurant

For those of you who don't know what bibimbap is, it's basically, rice with veggies and a raw egg in a hot stone bowl. You squeez a lot of hot sauce on it (Korean hot sauce not white people hot sauce) and mix it all together and eat. It's one of my stables when I go to a Korean restaurant.

Here's a picture of what it suppose to look like unmixed, from Wiki

Obviously this was not in a stone bowl, but the best ones comes in a stone bowl, it changes the taste completely, don't be fooled!!


This is another side dish that we ordered, that I do not know the name of, it was a recommendation from the server. It is SUPER spicy. The red stuff is actually pork belly, you eat it with the chopped up sauce soaked green onion on the side. It's not bad, but it was really spicy. I would say I am a pretty big spice eater, but this I could only eat a few at a time.


Here's a picture of japchae, this was part of the combo, no one touched this, cuz we were all too full. It became my lunch (eating it while typing this blog). I'd imagine the microwave changed the taste of this, so I won't comment on the taste of this.


Another stable of mine is the seafood pancake, this one was also part of the combo, it was really good, though a bit small. It had the mandatory crispy outside, a ton of seafood (you can actually see the shrimps!), and the inside is soft and chewy *drool*

I can eat seafood pancakes all day long! This and bibimbap are my favourite Korean food


This is a side order that my brother ordered. It is very weird tasting...It's basically just boiled beef tendon. It was very very bland, this was the only item on the table that I had to use the provided sauce for.


This was a plate of meat that they took into the kitchen to cook for us. Yes you heard it right, they served it raw, someone (I think the owner) came out and saw all the food piled on our table and said, in very bad English, "I cook for you inside?" and she took it away, we did not see it till we were almost finished with everything. We thought they had forgotten. When it came out it was steamy hot, I think they were checking to see if we were almost finished to cook and bring out the plate.

It tastes different than the plate that we grilled ourselves (there were 2 plates of this), probably because they were able to stir fry it with the sauce, but we weren't able to do that (cuz the metal plate was not wok shaped). The sauce has a hint of sugar, and the meat was very tender, this was also good. I kept eating it, and then complaining about how full I was (then continued to stick my chopstick in it).

There were a few more items that were part of the combo that I did not take pictures of. 1 small bowl of hot pot, which I did not even eat because it was too far away from my reach. And 1 basket of 5 dumplings that was not very impressive, it tasted like it was uncooked (or maybe we were suppose to cook it?)

And the bill came to...

yes I know it looks very pricey, but to be honest most Korean restaurants are pretty pricey. I honestly think we would have been fine without the weird beef tendon dish ($19.95) and the red hot pork with green onion thing ($24.99), which would have made our total $99.86, with 15% tips and 5% tax, the total will come to $119.83, divided by 5 people that's about $24 per person, which is acceptable. Instead we paid around $175 including tax and tips, which came to $35 per person, a little higher than I would like to pay for restaurant food.


And what's a birthday without cake! This I had at the office with some co-workers/friends though.

Mixed fruit cake from The Boss. A little heavy on the whipped cream, and some of the fruits were very soury, but good nontheless. YUM!

And so start the 27th year of my life.