Book Kyung Ban Jeom (북경반점): Jajangmyeon and Black Day

Tteokbokki is my favourite Korean dish, hands down. However, I do really like Korean-Chinese fusion food too.

Book Kyung Ban Jeom is one of the Korean-Chinese restaurants in Vancouver. Though this is one of the more Korean than Chinese (food-wise and staff-wise) restaurants. After ordering, we were served with sides - yellow pickled radish and kimchi white radish

Sides

Our first dish was the sweet and sour chicken, kinda like the Chinese sweet and sour pork. The chicken was crispy and flavourful.

tangsuyuk - crispy sweet and sour chicken

Read More

Ap Gu Jung 압구정

Ap Gu Jung is a Korean restaurant on Robson street. The restaurant is casual with 2 floors and my friends and I sat on the upper floor. The was literally one light above our table hanging down so it was quite dimmed, hence I apologize in advance for the pictures - I definitely need to work on my skills in dim places. 

I realized that whenever my friends and I go for Korean food, we order relatively fast. That's because we basically order the same thing each time! Seafood pancake has always been popular among my friends and I. It's basically batter mixed with a variety of seafood, most noticeably squid. One thing that makes me not want to eat seafood pancake is that it is very oily.

Jap chae (당면)

Jap chae is a stir-fried dish made of sweet potato noodles. I really like the noodles as they are unique and chewy. I actually tried making jap chae before at home and it is actually fairly easy.

Traditional Seafood Pancake ($15.95)

Spicy rice cakes (떡볶이)  ddukbokki

One of my favourite Korean dishes is ddukbokki (spicy rice cakes). I actually don't like spicy food very much, but I love these rice cakes - I love them because of their chewy texture. This dish came with fish cakes and glass noodles, which is very typical. Ddukbokki from Ap Gu Jung was actually not exactly the best I've had - not very chewy. In fact, I prefer ddukbokki from In the Cup more than this one.

Yogurt soju

Ap Gu Jung also has a great selection of soju and we shared a bottle of yogurt soju. The picture shows a cup of yogurt soju. (The size of the cups are actualy like shot glasses, it just looks big in the picture due to my poor skills!)

Ap Gu Jung also has a great selection of hot pot dishes and we got a beef stew dish, which was pretty good but I didn't get a picture of it. It can get pretty hot in the restaurant if you order a hot pot dish as the gas stove will be turned on and heat the hot pot dish continuously. Of course, like all Korean restaurants, we had a nice portion of their side dishes too. With all these dishes, our bill came to a total of ~$130 after tax.

Read More

In the Cup

In the Cup serves Korean food and they opened last month in the basement of the Student Union Building (SUB) of UBC, replacing the Mediterranean place. I've seen long line-ups at this place already and seems like they are doing pretty well. That isn't surprising as the SUB has a range of Japanese, Chinese, Italian (pasta), and Western food, but Korean. Before In the Cup opened, the only place on campus for Korean food would be at the village, which is not as convenient or fast to go to. 

Tteokbokki (in the cup) $3

Tteokbokki 떡볶이 (or dotpoki as I'd like to say) is basically rice cakes in special sauce that is hot and spicy. I fell in love with tteokbokki the first time I tried it. I think I really like chewy things. In the Cup sells tteokbokki for $3 in a cup or $5 in a bowl. I got cup-sized and I realized how convenient it was to travel (and eat) with it. The rice cakes were absolutely one of the bests I've ever had. They were warm, tender, and chewy - just the way I like it.

Read More