Insadong

Rating: *** out of *****

In celebration of Mother's Day, my birthday and my dad's birthday we decided to try out a Korean BBQ place in Burnaby. I've driven by this restaurant every Saturday, as I make my way to work (at Lougheed Mall) and I've always been interested in trying it out. My mom was also very keen to try this place after reading all the rave review on dinehere.ca. We were psyched to try out some authentic Korean Barbeque and celebrate many years of awesome family memories.

Since my sister is allergic to seafood, we opted not to eat the seafood hot-pot. Instead we went for the 2-3 person BBQ combo. You may think that the 2-3 person combo is not enough food to feed a family of 5, but they give you so much meat and other stuff that if we ordered the 4-5 person combo, we would not have finished even half of it!

Here is the appetizer, of 3pcs Radish Seaweed Roll (w/ jellyfish and garlic sauce). We thought the presentation was very unique, and this cute dish had a very interesting flavor. I enjoyed it!

I had my heart set on eating the Korean Seafood Pancake, but my parents really wanted the Japche. In the combo, you had a choice of either/or, so we got the Japche for the combo and ordered a separate appetizer of the pancake (it was $9.99). This was my favorite, it was crispy on the outside, full of shellfish meat and fluffy on the inside... Delish!

Here's the Bulgogi Japche, it was quite small. So, we were glad we got it with the combo instead of buying it separately (which would have cost $13.99). It was only so-so, I've had better.

This Beef Salad was quite interesting. The dressing was a bit too oily for my taste, but the marinated beef (that's hiding under all the greens) was very tender and juicy.

Oooo... look at all that meat. There was some more on the left-side of the plate, but our server placed it on the grill before I could get a shot (That's why the plate looks so empty)

Grilling our meat, what fun! It was exciting to watch all the juices flow out of the beef and cook the meat exactly to our liking.

Soybean Soup Anyone? This soup was very hearty. It had a nice texture, almost like miso soup but with a slightly different flavor. There were also 2 clams hiding at the bottom of the bowl! What a treat :)

If you ever go to Korean BBQ at Insadong, be sure to make good use of the bell on the side of the wall. If you don't press the bell, you won't be pleased with the service. But if you do use the bell, your server will promptly respond and gladly provide any assistance you need.

Overall, the meal was good. I must say that there was actually too much meat for my liking. I guess I'm just use to having lots of rice and then eating a little bit of meat and veggie on the side. Too much meat made me feel a little gross. The atmosphere was very traditional, stylish and inviting and the servers were friendly. The only comment I might make is that if you have allergy to seafood you may want to avoid this restaurant. When asking some of the servers/waiters if there was seafood in some of the dishes I'm not sure they completely understood what we were asking; and sometimes they said no, when there were obviously pieces of seafood in the dish. That's not to say that if you have allergies to seafood you shouldn't go, because my sister does and we were careful and all worked out well, I'm just telling anyone who has allergies to err on the side of caution when dining here. But other than that the food was yum! And the celebration was even better.