Instagram has been pretty sweet to me since it picks and chooses the right cookie trails to follow. I have been blasted with a lot of restaurant ads but I have grown pretty accustomed to all the similar tasting food no matter how new and innovative a restaurant tries to be.
Then came an ad for "First Time Korean Food". It didn't look like they were targeting foreigners since everything in the ad was in Ukrainian. But that won't stop me, right?
All they needed was to show me a few pictures of ramen and I was sold. I hopped onto their Instagram page and found out they were just a 15 minutes drive from where I was.
I believe what really sold me was that the spot was as genuine as it could get. A Korean signboard with a very authentic looking kitchen...or at least whatever of it was visible.
A small google search revealed that this was indeed the only authentic Korean restaurant in the city, although far from being the first Asian one. The name hence was both creative and true.
I thoroughly enjoyed the sight of it. The shop looks very authentic with the straw walls and overall design. The menu was by far the best one I have seen in town. It reminded me of the dessert menu in Dubai mall's Texas de Brazil.
They had replica models of their food items displayed through a glass shelf. You could read the names, ingredients, net weight and price as well as see what you could expect after the order was ready.
Since the names are a little tough to pronounce, they have also numbered the items so you can simply order them by the numbers. They had rice fingers, ramen with soy, seafood, beef, veggies, and also cheese. They also had rice bowls with different sorts of things.
Apart from the ramen and rice, they had some authentic bottled Korean drinks and Vitamin C with a cute guy on the box. I wasn't in the mood for drinks or a cute guy Vitamin C so I went with the other options.
I guess I already had built up an expectation from the outlook of the restaurant. All that remained was for the shop to match it. Oh, I also asked about the chef. Turns out he is Korean and he has set up shop here. All the ingredients are local, though. Whoops, that never ends well, does it?
Look at that!
I am genuinely taken away! The food looks exactly like the plastic replicas on display. The color, the plating, everything is picturesque! I am out of words. I never expected the food to come out exactly like it was displayed! Even the bowls are the same!
This is the seafood ramen. A huge shrimp in the middle, just like in the replica, surrounded by a gang of mussels. All in a wonderful smelling broth with spring onions and herbs.
I have watched enough anime to know how to gobble up ramen, Japanese or Korean. However, I don't think I have seen how is shrimp and mussels eaten with a chopstick.
I resorted to using my hands for the seafood. The flavor of the broth was ... delicious. Since I have no experience with Korean food I have no say if it was authentic tasting or not. It was very delicious and different. The shrimp went really well with the broth.
This is the rice bowl with beef. Served in a beautiful black ceramic bowl with lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, beef, rice, egg with sesame seeds. Fresh and tasty veggies! You could tell everything was freshly chopped up since they hadn't loss their strength and were still juicy.
I loved the beef. I simply loved it. I wish they would sell their beef separately. It was sweet and sour beef with some of sort of sauce drizzled all over it. I could eat this for days on end. When you pair up the veggies, rice and beef, it feels like a bite of magic.
I actually ended up taking a portion home in a takeaway order. I cannot explain how content I was with this. 5 starts, for sure!
While there is a dine-in area, I chose to sit outside. The weather is incredibly friendly and there was just something so satisfying about sitting next to the waterfall and eating Korean food by the sound of running water.
It was an experience by itself. The place just opened up and I can see myself going there over and over again. I took my time with the meal. Enjoying the view. Watching the sunset and the lights of the waterfall go on. I thoroughly enjoyed this meal.
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