The cooking, eating and travel blog of a hungry blogger from Sydney, Australia featuring original recipes, interviews and articles on all things food @Not Quite Nigella

Category Archives: Korean

Wow Bulgogi, Kensington

wow bulgogi kensington cooking

Mr NQN, Queen Viv and I were grateful that Wow Bulgogi has such a distinct and eye catching name. Miss America is even more grateful for it too. This steamy hot Summer evening, we were supposed to meet at our new place as Miss America had yet to visit our new digs. Not for lack of trying. You see on Hallowe’en he couldn’t find our house having gone to the wrong street entirely and not possessing a mobile phone, he rang us from his home at 10pm distressed at wandering the streets of my suburb unable to find us. Tonight, the meeting time passes and he still hasn’t turned up. We leave a note on the door and go to Wow Bulgogi wondering what fate might have befallen him this time. We sit down and peruse the menu and then who should emerge from a taxi but Miss America!

wow bulgogi kensington inside

“I don’t want to talk about it” he says distraught at the heat and another goose chase around the Eastern Suburbs. We prod him further and he tells us “I remember the name was ‘Wow’ something and I rang directory assistance and they told me this place”. Turns out he had written down the wrong street number for us and the distinct name of this restaurant was the only thing that lured him to the right spot. He was living the 2009 version of the Scorcese comedy “After Hours”.

wow bulgogi kensington ribs cooking

wow bulgogi kensington pork cooking

Onto the food – and the heat. Some might say that we are crazy having bulgogi during a heatwave and you may be right. We were seated near the open windows and even though there was an air conditioner at work, it didn’t feel like it once the hot plate was turned on. The menu explains that it’s called Wow Bulgogi as they want people to say “Wow!” when they taste the food.

wow bulgogi kensington drinks

Drinks from left to right: 17 cha, Aloe vera drink, chorok maesil and sikhye (rice punch) $4 each

The Aloe Vera drink is the favourite with its sweet, almost faux grape flavour taste. The Sikhye or rice punch is sweet with little bits of rice floating in it and the chorok maesil is a pleasant, fruity flavoured drink. The 17 Cha is a plain unsweetened green tea and is quite dull in comparison. We get our complimentary assortment of accompaniments including potatoes, marinated tofu strips, kim chee, beansprouts and coleslaw with the tastiest being the sweet soy potatoes and the marinated tofu strips.

wow bulgogi kensington pork

Sam Gyubsal Pork Belly $16

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37 comments | January 2, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella

Chocolate Kkomz, Eastwood

“Chocolate Whaaat?” my sister asks when I tell her the name of the restaurant we are going to. This will be a familiar phrase repeated also when I tell M, her boys and my husband the restaurant name. This is our second attempt at dining at Chocolate Kkomz. Last week a staff member had taken our reservation and we had shown up at 1pm only to find the restaurant closed and the staff member waiting outside for us apologising profusely for taking our booking when the restaurant wasn’t open. So when we are running 5 minutes late, M texts us that she is sitting down at our booth and let us know that “Yes, it’s open!”.

Another booth

The booths are unusual, ours is like a train dining carriage and the decor is full of dark woods. Other booths bear a more home spun look with embroidered patterned cream fabric and ties. There’s an assortment of Christmas tunes playing in the background to get us in the Christmas mood. Prices change after 5.30pm by roughly 20% .

The menu is full of reasonably priced options along with some more expensive items like the $80 Pumpkin Fondue special which is poured into a whole steamed pumpkin and needs to be ordered in advance as it takes 2 hours. It’s said to be Korean fusion and indeed some of the dishes are. The waitress is lovely and patient with our umming and ahhing but we don’t see the bell on the table which we are supposed to use to get service throughout the evening.

The rules…

One thing we do notice is the list of rules (we get a hint of these when we walk into the restaurant and see a sign that says “No Prams, No Skateboards”). They emphasise that they are not a library, school or private office. There’s a minimum of 1 dish per person rule and kids that climb under and over the tables are not permitted. The boys are a bit scared of being ejected from the premises which serves to quieten them when their volume levels reach too high. Useful!

Appletise $4.50

Complimentary sides

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22 comments | December 23, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Carne Station at Parramatta

Make no mistake about this, this is a meat lover’s paradise. If the name doesn’t indicate that its for meatlovers, the concept will: an all you can eat buffet of meat (and salads). Ever since my favourite Korean BBQ restaurant closed down years ago, I’ve been in mourning. I haven’t been to a single Korean BBQ buffet restaurant. Mostly because when I mention it to some friends, they inevitably grumble at the idea of cooking at the table-why go to a restaurant if you have to cook the food they say? I say that they’ve missed the point of Korean BBQ. I know that my most adventuresome food adventurer friends Queen Viv and Miss America won’t mind though and reading about a Korean BBQ buffet place in Parramatta immediately brought back memories of the place in Little Hay St Chinatown. Parramatta was far for us, nearly an hour away but what’s distance in the name of good food.

Soba

Its fairly empty when we arrive at 7pm on a Saturday night with three other couples and a large family table. All the better to get our food. The cooking stations are Gas powered, not the old coals that when they brought them to your table, you’d sit so still in case they drop a lava-hot coal lump into your lap.

The selection is set against the back wall and features about 10 kinds of meat with several types of bulgogi marinated, ribs, lamb, tandoori chicken, chicken wings, giblets; 2-3 types of seafood (banana prawns, mussels and octopus), sushi, fried dumplings, honey soy wings, soba, jap chae, salads, rice, three kinds of soups, desserts and coffee. What is out there is in fairly small portions, I assume to deter people from overeating so whilst other places heave a vast amount of food out at one go, the trays are filled with only 5 prawns at a time which gives it a slightly forlorn look, unlike most buffets which beckon bountifully.

Bean sprout and potato salads

We go to retrieve our chosen dishes and dig into the salads and pre cooked food while our meat is frying. I’m the designated cook of the night and I am happy to tend to the grill. The Bean Sprout salad is ok, not quite as sesame-y as I like it. If its good, I could eat a whole bowl of this, if its not, I could take it or leave it. We don’t bother for seconds of this. The potato salad is good, sweet and just like your typical Korean/Japanese potato salad, with a slightly mashed potato consistency combined with soft potato chunks. I have plenty of this.

Spring Onion salad

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7 comments | February 8, 2008 by Not Quite Nigella

Haemil at Circular Quay

If your dearest wish is to listen to some lovely piano music while you eat but have a hankering for Korean food, then I’ve got this little dilemma sorted for you. In the middle of Circular Quay, in a tall grey office building sits a small Korean restaurant serving delicious food alongside some wonderful classical piano pieces played by the muscly Korean owner! Not something you’d expect at all.

Finding it is a little tricky, its tucked away in the building and even though I rang ahead and the owner gave me very specific directions, we still find ourselves wandering around a little until my husband spies their sign. We’re greeted by the friendly waitress and even though we’ve come a bit earlier than when they’re officially open (as we need to make a movie at the nearby Dendy Opera Quays), she’s friendly and accommodating and assures us that the pressed time will not be an issue.

The restaurant is all sleek black backed chairs, shiny spotless wooden floorboards and of course, a glossy black baby grand right in the middle of the restaurant. The walls echo what I’ve been told: that I should definitely order the Chicken and Ginseng soup-a dish that Koreans are said to partake of in the hot summer to help invigorate themselves and give them the “strength of a bear”. Browsing through the other items, I see Dolsot Bibimbab, one of my favourite dishes with rice, beef, vegetables, chili and raw egg yolk served in a hot stone bowl so that the egg yolk cooks while being stirred around with the other ingredients.

Shortly after we order the owner arrives and he is chatty, friendly and charming and makes you feel even more welcome. We get our side dishes of kimchi, shredded potato, konyakku with chili and soy, sesame bean sprouts, and pickled radish. He tells us that they’re all made fresh in the morning and anything not eaten is discarded so that its fresh every day. The shredded potato is firm and buttery, the konyakku is fabulously soft and luscious (and impossible to pick up with chopsticks!), the pickled radish is similar to Kimchi but with a different texture and the sesame bean sprouts are good although they could be more sesame-y. I leave the Kimchi as I am not a big Kimchi eater after overdosing on it one evening only to have ferocious nightmares all night.

Chicken and Ginseng soup $25 (whole small chicken stuffed with rice, ginseng root, chestnut and jujube in chicken and ginseng broth)