The Hungry Bunny

We'd gushed to the lovely waitress at Meta how we loved their food, but bemoaned the lack of an ala carte menu...So she recommended their sister restaurant, Kimme , a bistro-styled restaurant headed up by yet another Korean-born chef. Unlike Meta's exclusively degustation menus, Kimme 's menu is primarily ala carte: which is split into the sweet and savoury - the latter served in small and big plates. The food here is similar to Meta: European techniques awash with Asian influences and grounded in Korean flavours. We really wanted to like Kimme , mostly because we love Meta so damn much...But, while dinner was perfectly enjoyable, we thought that Kimme fell short of the extraordinary that is Meta. There wasn't a marked grouse nor could we pick a particular flaw, but it was missing that "je ne sais quoi", that magic-something that distinguishes between the competent and the transcendent. The sumptuousness of the Wagyu Bulgogi Tataki ($26) was contraste...

Chang Korean has been on my to-eat list for quite some time. The Dempsey Hills long-timer is well regarded by the Korean expat community for serving up reasonably decent Korean fare. It's not the most authentic (for that, you'll have to make friends with the Koreans and invite yourself into their homes) and tbh, it can't quite compare to Seoul's offerings, but this was as good as you're gonna get in this part of Asia. They say the mark of a good Korean restaurant is its kimchi, and in this case, the kimchi was dismal. It was excessively sour and lacked the punch of a spicy kick or the sweet of fermentation to balance it out. The other banchan were a hit-and-miss. The cauliflower, dubu-jjim (chilled steamed tofu), and gamja jorim (soy marinated potatoes) were adequate, but the sigeumchi namul (seasoned spinach), kong-namul (seasoned soy bean sprouts) and oi muchim (kimchi cucumbers) were dreadfully mediocre. Thankfully, the Haemul Soondubu Jjigae ($18), spicy...

Wang Dae Bak was recently picked by HGW as the best Korean restaurant in Singapore. Although I have a policy of reserving my Korean food-indulgence for only when I'm in South Korea, the rave reviews given to the CBD-adjacent restaurant definitely got me curious. Enough to venture into the hole-in-the-wall at the hip Amoy Street enclave on a bustling week night. The narrow galley of a restaurant was smoky, cramped, and felt so confined it veered towards claustrophobic. The clincher was the lack of alcohol, because Wang Dae Bak hadn't gotten a liquor licence. In spite of the abundance of soju posters liberally plastered all over the busy restaurant. Suffice to say, Wang Dae Bak is a no place to linger after a meal. You're best served heading off to one of the bars down the road, for a post-meal booze-up.  Food-wise, Wang Dae Bak was a hit-and-miss. Stews were commendable, and the kimchi was perhaps one of the best outside of the Korean peninsula, but the barbecue was...

One of the latest food fads is Korean bingsu, or, as a friend calls it, Korean ice-kachang. It was introduced to our shores, along with the Hallyu wave, couple of years prior, but it's now really taken off. Every other mall along Orchard Road now has one bingsu cafe, a sure sign of the current craze over the Korean dessert. Despite having recently developed a love for Korean food (thanks to the Seoul trip over Easter), I haven't had the opportunity to sample bingsu. Till now. So, a big caveat to my lackluster visit to O'Ma Spoon is that I've no basis for comparison. Perhaps O'Ma Spoon isn't the best purveyor of bingsu, or perhaps my personal preferences lean towards the local ice-kachang, but I'm not a fan. I just don't geddit. We had the Green Tea Bingsu ($13.90), a towering Japanese matcha-inspired concoction of red beans, green tea powder, green tea ice-cream, and shaved almonds blanketing fluffy milk flakes. This wasn't too bad, but I didn...

I recently went on a salad bender. All day, everyday, for almost two weeks, my diet comprised an arugula base dotted with cherry tomatoes, pinenuts, and dried cranberries, dressed simply in EVOO, and finished off with roasted chicken breast. The odd thing was, I wasn't on some kind of fitness regime, weight-reduction plan or anything of the sort. As incredulous as it sounds, I just really really really loved my salads. (if you know me personally, you'll understand why it'd be quite the shock that I, the biggest junk food-lover, was suddenly "eating healthy") My girlfriends, well-aware of my salad binge, brought me to Paik's Bibim , in an effort to change up my routine, but still stay within the category of salad-esque grub. Paik's Bibim , a self-serviced bistro serving up modern renditions of Korean bibimbap, is the Asian answer to western salads. Choc-a-bloc with fresh vegetables galore, Asian-styled proteins, atop a steamed rice layer, and tossed with ...

I hadn't been very impressed with Auntie Kim's Korean Restaurant along Upper Thomson , but decided to give it another go at their southern outpost. This time, we ordered the right stuff, and while I still think their banchan needs work, I finally understand the hype about this place. Some of their dishes, if done right, are executed with aplomb, such that a return visit is now on the cards. The Kimchi fell a little flat. I was hoping for a more piquant kick. The Sigeumchi Namul , seasoned spinach, was bordering on tasteless, save for the metallic taste of the spinach. Like the seasoned spinach above, the Kong Namul , seasoned beansprouts, was lacking in flavour too. The Buhsut Jorim , sauteed mushrooms, with its clear and earthy tones, was one of 2 banchan that was halfway decent. The Doljaban Muchim , seasoned kelp with chilli, while fun to chew, wasn't quite my cup of tea. The Panjeon , a sweet and crunchy vegetable pancake with carrots, was nice...

Remind me to never let the Hubs do the ordering ever again. Imagine this: 5 whole main courses, 2 barbecue meat courses, and 6 appetizer banchan for just 3 persons. We were at Bornga , the hugely popular Korean BBQ chain of restaurants spanning the globe from the USA to China, and now in Singapore's Vivocity , for dinner, and I'd stepped out to answer a call, leaving the guys to do the ordering. I came back to a table piled so high with dishes we had to resort to using a rolling cart on the side. Suffice it to say, we had to pack some of the dishes home because, try as we might, we just couldn't finish it all. I'd read disparaging reports of awful service, ranging from the slow and inattentive, or just downright rude, but because we were dining on an off-peak weekday night, the restaurant was barely occupied and we were dealt with politely, if a little indifferently. Food-wise, Bornga was pretty decent, albeit teetering on the above average-mark. In the overall sche...