Friday 29 June 2007

Kimchi Korean Restaurant (in Penang, Malaysia)

In the next three weeks, there will be a special section to IronEaters: Penang food!! Yes, yours truly is back in the Paradise of Food (which is also where she comes from) for three weeks and plans to gorge on all the yummies of her hometown. :D Except (I will be kicked severely for this) I am not much of a hawker food person and because of health reasons, I am trying to cut down on hawker food. However, the obligatory Char Koay Teow post WILL BE up when I get to my favourite stall. And a few select favourite Mouse hawker dishes. ^~

FYI, Penang is a state in Malaysia.

The first Penang post is going to feature Kimchi, a Korean restaurant near to my house (please don't ask me for the address, I was an idiot and forgot to take the business card - but I'll edit this post once I find out). I went there for lunch with my mother and aunt today.

Our lunch - consisting of the usual Korean appetizers (I know there's a name for them but I don't know whaaat), a main dish, a drink and a dessert, cost RM12 per person, which divides out to be roughly AUD$4.

There's the blatant $$$ reason why I love Penang so damn much. Hahahahha.

Anyway, there were a selection of 6 appetizers to choose from.

Freeeeee. :D

From top left, the first one was a kind of bean in sauce, which was quite ok. The next one was of course the kimichi in which it nearly burnt off my tongue. After that was the sesame bamboo-shoot thingy, which was my second favourite of the lot. And then to the bottom of it, the asparagus, which was my FAVOURITE. It was so yummy and tasty and so yay! ^~ The one to the right of it is an omlette thing which was quite ordinary (but good ordinary), and the last one was a spicy radish-veggie thing.

I had the Don-Gas, which was Korean-style pork cutlet.

The rice served looked little - but I didn't finish it even.

It was a pretty ordinary cutlet in my opinion, but the sauce was pretty special. It was a sort of spicy-sweet sauce that was quite different to what I have tasted before, and it went very well with the pork cutlet. One thing about the cutlet was it was skinless, so there were no fatty bits, which was yay-ness for me.

Mum had the Kong Guksu, Korean noodles in cold soya bean soup.

So pretty and white.

We've never even heard of or tried it before, so Mum decided to be adventurous and try that. And WOW. It was so amazingly specially good!! First off, the noodles came with a small portion of salt - so you could season it however salty you want it to be. The soya bean broth was REAL soya bean, non of the watery stuff. It was so rich and thick that we could actually taste the bean bits in the broth. And the Korean noodles were tops. They were thin and springy to the bite, so so good. There was practically no oil at all, which made Mum a very happy Mum.

My aunt decided on the Janchi Guksu, Korean-style noodles in broth. It was a very light and sweet soup, accompanied with the same yummy noodles and lots of veggies. She certainly loved it!

It was actually all smoky from hot steam; I had to photoshop this. x.x

For dessert, it was some lavender-ginger concoction (not sure what it exactly was) which was quite nice but took a little getting used to. :D

Definitely going back there again! The ambiance was nice and the staff was friendly - it was run by a young-ish Korean couple. After 5 years in Melbourne - I thought that was supremely cheap but my aunt didn't really agree, even if she liked the food. :D The prices were definitely WAY BEYOND CHEAP compared to Melbourne - but an average price for Penang, I guess.

Address coming soon, I hope.

- Mouse

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

aaa...the food looks delicious! and the noodle with soya bean sounds very special.. if got chance, i must try it! Malaysia got such good and cheap food...wish im there now =(

San

Anonymous said...

Is this Kimchi Restaurant in front the Esso gas station and just next door to Papa Pizza? The place looked quiet - less people. Now they have promotion of set lunch for 12 RM ++ (not sure the correct price). I will give this place a try then since you have thumbs up for it :-)

There's another new Korean restaurant too called Korean Palace/Place operated since 25/04/2008 @ Tg Tokong... in front of Wisma Sony (I think)