Monday, June 21, 2010

Cho Sun Ok Korean BBQ Restaurant (Hamilton, ON)

273 King Street East
Hamilton, Ontario
905.526.0889

I've always noticed Cho Sun Ok Korean BBQ on Queen Street but for whatever reason I was intimated to go in. I think I imagined that I would be forced to sing karaoke. Don't ask why I got this idea. Anyhow, when a new location opened very close to A's place, we talked about checking it out. On the Friday evening before I left for Montréal for a week, we went downstairs to eat Korean.

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We were greeted by a television playing relatively loud Korean music videos. We were also seated right underneath it. The videos and dancing really amused us and kept us entertained. Going through the menu, it was difficult to find a vegetarian option for A. After many questions and responses along the life of "Is there meat in this?" "No, just beef", our cute little waitress conferred in the back and informed there was one item that was not on the menu that had no meat, nor fish. I decided to order the bibimbap.

Luckily, the jeon (Korean pancake) the waitress served us was vegetarian. We had a hard time eating the jeon with the thin, flat metallic chopsticks, at which point the waitress brought out a fork for A only. HA!

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Jeon with carrots and zucchini.

The waitress then came out with a cart of banchan, including kimchi, that were also all vegetarian.

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Six small plates of banchan in the background.

A was slightly disappointed that his dish consisted of cold noodles. It was good but I think he didn't expect a cold dish. I quite liked the spicy red sauce that he had to mix in with the noodles. The bibimbap came hot in an earthenware bowl. Unfortunately, I could not share any with A since it had ground beef. I mixed in the accompanying sauce with the various vegetables and ground beef into the rice, as well as the fried egg on top. I liked that the rice got crusty when in came into contact with the surface of the bowl. It was a lot more than I could eat but I did my best!

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A's mystery vegetarian noodles and my bibimbap.


I definitely would like to try this out again, maybe check out the japchae. It was a bit hard to communicate but that added to the experience (with the loud Korean music).

P.S. All pictures were taken by A since I didn't have my camera with me. This explains the better resolution!

For other Korean restaurant posts:
* Baramibunei, Hamilton, Ontario
* Road to Seoul, Los Angeles, California

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Stick to Harvey's veggie burgers.