Y-Lyn's Journal...... Of Food, Fun & Travel =): * BBQ

Showing posts with label * BBQ. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Kkongdon Korean BBQ @ Marina Square (Marina Link)

JP Pepperdine launched its first outlet of Kkongdon Korean BBQ Restaurant at Marina Square (Marina Link). As most of you will know, JP Pepperdine started with the popular Jack’s Place Steakhouse in 1966. Since then, it slowly introduced other dining concepts into Singapore such as Restaurant Hoshigaoka, Brewbaker’s kitchen and bar, Eatzi Gourmet etc.

"Kkongdon" translates to "best price value" in Korean. With this philosophy in mind, the first Korean BBQ restaurant was opened in Sinchon, Seoul in January 2005. Providing high-quality Korean BBQ at reasonable prices, it has managed to capture the young generation who seek quality food in a chic and modern environment. Over the years, Kkongdon has grown and to date, there are a total of 67 outlets in

Korea

The design of this restaurant is adapted from Kkongdon Korea.

Another distinctive plus point here is that you can find individual retractable exhaust pipes installed at each dining table to minimize the BBQ smell.

At the salad bar, you can find lettuce (which can be used to wrap the BBQ meat), leek, green cut-chillies, raw onion rings and garlic cloves.

If you don't take BBQ meat, maybe you are just accompanying your group of carnivorous friends for a BBQ dinner, you may opt for their kimchi and salad only at $5++.

The four different types of dipping sauces that they offer are namely sesame oil, the Oriental dressing (sweet & sour sauce), soya sauce and Ssam Jang sauce (a spicy chilli sauce imported from Korea). These are popular dipping sauces used in Korea. In fact, as per most Franchise Agreements, the majority of the sauces and dips are imported direct from the Master Franchisor in

Korea

Onion Sauce was also served and the staff told us that we should dip our BBQ beef finger onto it to enhance the taste.

Spicy Pork Belly ($16)

We BBQ the meat on our own and also cut it to slices on our own.

As what the staff had recommended, we dipped it in the onion sauce to try it out first. Somehow, I felt that the pork belly were sort of "chewy". Be careful, the meat were rather spicy too. Make sure you have your water ready by your side.

Beef Fingers ($16) were nicely presented on the plate. Beef fingers the parts at the ribs and these were very fresh. The beef served at the restaurant is chilled, prime steer cuts and natural-fed Beef that is directly sourced and shipped from N.Z. Silver Fern Farms. This beef is from the very batch imported and served at Jack’s Place restaurants. As such, the quality is not being compromised.

Probably we BBQ them for too long, the beef fingers were quite tough though. It does take some skills to BBQ them well.

Eat it the way the Korean eat! You can wrap the meat onto the lettuce together with some beansprouts and sauce.

Kimchi Pancake

Bibimbap (Smaller portion)

Kimchi and Pork Belly Stew Hotpot

This was one of our favourite dishes, with the hot soup warming our stomach. The pork belly in it was very tender and absorbed the flavour of the kimchi soup.

Cold Kimchi Noodles

The noodles were smooth and this dish was quite refreshing.

Steamed Egg

The restaurant was full at around 1pm+ on a Saturday. However, the setting was quite comfortable and you wouldn't really feel hot and sweaty in this BBQ place. It is a good choice if you want to have BBQ in an air-conditioned and comfy setting.

It was an enjoyable lunch here with my hubby on a relaxing weekend.

Thanks Ms Evelyn Lew from JP Pepperdine for this food tasting session.

Kkongdon Korean BBQ
6 Raffles Boulevard
#B1-01/02 Marina Square, Marina Link
Tel: 63362580
Website: http://www.jppepperdine.com/kkongdon

(Nearest MRT Station: Esplanade)

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Mookata Traditional Thai BBQ @ East Coast Road

I took this photo about one month back after our meal at Saveur. I was attracted by the interesting signboard which stretched above two storefronts with the two prominent little pink piggies at each end. Along this stretch of road, we can find many specialty restaurants that will definitely whet your appetitie. I was happy to come back just within a month to try out Mookata!

Mookata Traditional Thai BBQ - This is their trademark logo :) So cute! The restaurant is located along the same stretch of road where you can find Astons, 1928 Peranakan shop. It is not easy to miss it. If you are driving there, I would suggest that you go to Katong Village, just directly opposite to find your parking lot.

I reached the restaurant at around 6pm on a weekday. There was still no crowd yet as the heavy rain had just stopped. Around 7pm, the crowd then started to come in.

The whole place is rather spacious and most importantly, you don't feel too hot and stuffy after all the BBQ.

You can find a ceramic plate (with a metal plate on top to hold the hotpot) placed on every table to prevent overheating and damaging the table top.

Prior to this visit, I had not heard of the Mookata dining concept. Its direct translation is "Pork Skillet". Mookata is a combination of BBQ and asian hotpot altogether. Normally, when we have our steamboat cum BBQ, the steamboat hotpot is at the core and we will grill our meats around the hotpot. However, Mookata reverses the concept. You will find a dome-shaped metal pan with a trough running around the edge for steamboat.

Mookata at East Coast Road just celebrated their first year opening anniversary recently.

They serve 3 types of home-made chilli sauces of different degree of spiciness. I find the one at the middle tasted a bit sweeter and the one at the far end the most spicy. Oh well, you got to try them on your own and have fun experimenting with the different tastes.

Let's check up the menu!

We had a "Set for 2" which consisted of a plate of meat and another plate of veggies, egg and vermicelli (aka tung hoon).

The egg was nicely nested amongst the veggies....

This is one of the business partners of the restaurant, Mr Lee Bajin. He brought in the hotpot and showed us how about cooking our meat. A very sincere and attentive guy, we saw him making his rounds very often to ensure that the customers were happy with the food and service.

He poured a kettle of vegetable broth into the hotpot.

After that, he put a piece of lard on the top of the metal dome and rubbed it against the dome surface to prepare for the BBQ.

The lard will then melt and the oil will drip down from the dome to the broth, to add taste to it.

Table Setting

We started to place the meat on the metal dome.

If your stomach still have space for more good food after finishing up the set, you might want to try some of their premium a-la-carte selections.

We had a plate of Wagyu Beef and...

Tom Yam Chicken (Thighs). Make sure that you don't overcook the wagyu beef. Normally, I like it medium well. I love the tom yam chicken. It was really well-marinated and tender. Try eating the chicken meat on its own without adding the extra chilli sauce to taste the original tom-yam flavour.

A nice plate of flower clams which the other blogger, Joycelyn loves to eat.

We had fun stacking the meat on the dome and flipping them to ensure that they were well-cooked and not burnt. The meat used here were all really fresh and of good quality. Maybe you will find the pricing a bit high compared to other steamboat restaurants, but they are really worth the money that you are paying for.

All is cooked with charcoal instead of electric stove.

Spread of BBQ meat and steamboat. The broth might get a bit salty at first and you can request to top up the steamboat with water instead of the veggie broth.