Korea House Restaurant Miri

We were driving past Pullman Hotel intending to go to Seventy2 Restaurant for dinner just now when we saw Korea Restaurant has already commenced business. We decided to have our dinner there instead.

Korea Restaurant is located in the corner shop just next to Santino’s Pizza near Pullman Hotel. It is a spacious restaurant spread over the ground floor and the first floor with a small Korean supermarket behind the restaurant.

As the waitress was taking our order, I asked her about the owner of the restaurant. It is owned by a Korean and opened for business only 2 days ago. The restaurant has an authentic Korean menu and a cozy atmosphere.

We ordered samgyeopsal, topokki, haemul pajeon, gun mandu and a bowl of gonggibap (steamed rice). For drinks, I had a Coke while my wife had a Korean green tea and my son opt for an aloe vera juice.

The side dishes that were included with our dinner are kimchi, brinjal, sausage omelete, black beans, vegetable salads and bean sprouts. Kimchi is a dish that Koreans absolutely must have at every meal, a tradition handed down from Korea’s 5,000-year history.

Samgyeopsal (삼겹살) is a dish of thick, fatty slices of pork belly meat. The meat, which is neither marinated nor seasoned, is cooked on a grill by ourselves at our table. It is served with ssamjang (쌈장) and lettuce leaves to wrap it in. Ssamjang is a thick, spicy paste made of doenjang (soybean paste), gochujang (red chili paste), sesame oil, onion, garlic, green onions, and brown sugar. I am not a fan of pork belly so I just tried a very small piece without wrapping it in lettuce.  My wife and my son seemed to enjoy this dish.

Topokki (떡볶이) is a popular Korean dish made from small-sized garae-tteok (long, white, cylinder-shaped rice cakes) called tteokmyeon (떡면).  Fish cakes, boiled eggs, and scallions are the added ingredients.  Our verdict is that the topokki at Korean Heritage tastes better.

The haemul pajeon (해물파전) is a seafood pancake with generous amount of scallion or spring onions.  I could not tell what other seafood was in our pancake besides some squid. Again, we were disappointed as the haemul pajeon at Korean Heritage tastes much better.

Gun-mandu (군만두) is pan-fried mandu or dumplings. It is filled with minced meat, green onions, garlic and ginger. This was the only dish that I found to be not bad.

The bowl of steamed rice, at RM5.30 (inclusive of GST), was rather expensive. Our bill came up to RM142.05.

By the way, I am not 100% sure what is the actual name of the restaurant.  The signboard says Korea Restaurant. The menu says Da Sa Rang Korean BBQ Restaurant. And the bill says Korea House Restaurant.

And be warned too. Since the meat is grilled inside the air-conditioned restaurant, the BBQ smell sticks to you. To be fair, I must say that the ambiance at Korea House Restaurant is much better than that at Korea Heritage Restaurant.