Friday, July 27, 2012

Buk Chang Dong

Happy Alex, with an array of Korean dishes.


After a recommendation for some really good Korean food in Toronto, Garry and ventured all the way to the west side of Toronto, in Korea Town. Just being in the vicinity of so much "Korea" was nice. Stores with their signs written in hangeul, and pictures hanging from all the restaurant windows of food that was on offer was enough to place me back in Korea.

The place we were headed for was called Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu. It's located at Bloor and Clinton, just west of Bathurst. The menu for Buk Chang Dong is really basic. For people maybe just experimenting with Korean food it'd be great just cause the menu is not overwhelming. There are only 8 different options, 6 of which are soup meals. The soups are a combination or choice of the following; seafood, kimchi, pork, beef, dumplings, egg and tofu. The of course there is all the banchan, which translates to side dishes. There was both radish and cabbage kimchi (obvs!), little flavoured beans, sprouts (one of my favourite banchan), and with some of the meals a miso style soup. The other 2 options on the menu are the bulgogi (marinated beef) meal and bibimbap (julienned veggies and rice). And of course rice. In some restaurants in Korea they would do this with the rice: serve it in a stone pot, scoop out most of it in a bowl for you, then pour boiling water into the stone pot to soak up the rest of the rice caked onto the sides. Basically just a different way of eating rice. They did this at Buk Chang Dong.

As all the sides starting coming out, I think our smiles just ended up getting wider and wider. My soup arrived with a raw egg on the side and I cracked it into the boiling broth and within moments, shazaam, all ready to go. Garry ordered the bulgogi because he isn't the biggest fan of soup, but it was awesome, cause it meant I got to have a sampling of everything. The beef was perfect, and my soup was great. There were 3 massive dumplings floating in it, the cracked egg, and tofu. Just how I like it!

Just like in Korea, there was waaaaaay too much rice for us to finish served and we should've known to only get one order (why in the world would you fill up on rice when there are so many other delicious flavours to go sample?). But we did really well with the rest of it, even getting seconds of all the banchan.

The best part of all of this was the meal cost us less than $20. Not quite as cheap as Korea, but definitely good bang for your buck in Toronto. If you've never been, check it out at 691 Bloor St West, TORONTO!

The dish on the top left is the one they added water to the rice in.


Bulgogi, rice, soup, kimchi, sprouts and beans.
Mmmmm, good!