Eating out at Seoul Korea Restaurant

If you’ve been following K-popped!, you’d have read that the women of the K-popped! Trio's family (we miss ya, Rooster!) had a Korean lunch on Christmas Day (told ya our passion for all things Korean is contagious).

Outside looking in: Seoul Korea Restaurant is on the first floor,
above Restoran Jalal Yusuf

In the group of six, some of them are good cooks in their own right (not me). Thus, it was a really pleasant outing when everyone agreed that the meal at Seoul Korea Restaurant in Taman Desa was delicious. You know how it is with good cooks, they are so hard to please ;-)!

Choices: A menu of good food

After a little while pondering over the menu, we settled for:

Spicy Chicken BBQ, 매운닭불고기 (RM25) – the waiter cooked the BBQ dish for us after heating up the charcoal.

Hot stuff: Heating up the charcoal

The cooks of the household were actually impressed by the dish, one commenting that it had a “unique flavour as it is marinated very nicely”. I don’t know what was used to marinate the chicken because it wasn’t written on the menu. No, I can’t tell you what was in it just by tasting the dish.

Ummm, my 어머니 actually calls me “crocodile mouth”, a term directly translated from Hokkien. Figuratively, it means someone who doesn’t taste anything, like a crocodile, the person just swallows the food.

However, I do know when food is good or bad even if all that nitty-gritty bit in the middle kind of eludes me.

BBQ Chicken: I wonder what ingredients are used to marinate
the chicken?

Oh, but I digress. Back to the Spicy Chicken BBQ, which wasn’t spicy at all. Malaysians who love their sambal (Malaysian-style chili paste) would have no problems whatsoever with it. I bet even children could eat it.

Kimchi Jjigae, 김치 찌개 (RM15) – this seems to be a K-popped! favourite, huh? Even Rooster cooked the dish in her K-popped! Kitchen.

Too spicy: A favourite K-popped! dish that didn't turn out too well

My Singapore 언니, who loves sour-flavoured dishes took to this one, saying it was pretty similar to the famous Thai soup called Tom Yum (a spicy and sour-flavoured dish with fragrant herbs).

However, the Kimchi Jjigae here was a little too spicy for my liking. It would have been more delicious if the soup was a little less spicy. The sour part was OK though.

Mushroom and Tofu Steamboat, 두부 버섯전골 (RM45) – the beef in the soup made the dish more fragrant and flavourful. Like its namesake, there were generous amounts of mushroom and tofu in the dish. What I liked most about it was the glass noodles because it was very springy.

Steamboat: Delicious glass noodles inside!

And that’s where we learned from another 언니 that the restaurant proprietor actually imports the noodles from Korea. We have glass noodles in Malaysia, but the local ones aren’t that springy.

Korean-style Seafood Spring Onion Pancake, 해물파전 (RM20) – ah, a hit with the group. I loved this one as well because it was filled with seafood and spring onion – yummy. Flavourful, lovely aroma and tasty.

Yummy: Loads of seafood! Yay!

Some even likened it to “O chien” – oysters cooked in egg omelette.

Added flavour: Dipping the pancake into the sauce

It came with a sauce and our friendly waiter pointed out that we should dip the pancake in it (it’s a little sour) before popping it into the mouth.

Of course, to complete the meal, there were many side dishes…so many, I can’t even describe them. You could actually enjoy a light meal on just the side dishes alone. And the best part was, you could top up on your fav side dish without extra cost.

Side dishes galore: This alone will keep you half-full :-)

Dessert was complimentary and each person was served a slice of watermelon and a ginger-flavoured drink. I don’t know what the drink was called but it was really refreshing after all the food. It tasted a little like tang yuan (湯圓)/glutinous rice ball soup.

Sweet: Watermelon slices for dessert

Refreshing: A toast to a fantastic year ahead with
our ginger-flavoured beverage

All said, it was a lovely and affordable meal. The bill only came up to RM115 – pretty amazing for a party of six.

However, the restaurant’s default drink wasn’t green tea like most other Korean restaurants. They served plain water instead.

How to get there:
The restaurant is opposite the Danau Idaman condominium entrance (the green and white-coloured condo beside the Shell petrol station) in Taman Desa.

Opening hours:
11am – 10.30pm

Telephone number:
03-7982 4607

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