Every now and again, I get back into the swing of watching dramas. Most recently, I've been watching a drama which has a strong focus on kimbap. I'm sure a lot of you know which one I'm talking about. So anyway, I've had a lot of kimbap on my mind and have dabbled in buying some from hanaro when at work, but thought it would be good to try some freshly made ones from the recently arrived popular street food chain, Sinjeon, which opened at Sunnybank Hills recently. The restaurant is small and doesn't take bookings. For our big group of eight, it took over 40 minutes for us to get a table. Lucky we had good company.
The ordering was both convenient as it was also confusing. Each table had a QR code where you could order online. Paying was done after the meal. However every time someone at your table ordered, your selection would also get wiped off your phone. That was the confusing part. The convenient part is that every order that is put in has a new invoice code, meaning that splitting the bill becomes drastically easier at the end. Anyway, the menu comprised of topokki, kimbap, fried dishes, rice and noodles as well as drinks. We ordered a selection to share.
We ordered some of the Korean drinks to try. There was peach, grape and also pineapple. The grape drink was delicious and had pieces of grape in it, but the peach and pineapple drink was definitely too sweet.
Smaller dishes we had included the fish cake and the cheesy hotdog. The fish cake was a little bland, but wholesome in a light soy broth. The hotdog was definitely a crowd favourite with stringy mozzarella, bread and sausage inside.
This was the crispy chicken jabchae. Portions were decent for the price and there was an abundance of fried chicken among the chewy potato noodles and cuts of tofu, seaweed and corn. The chicken was freshly fried however the batter definitely does not compare to proper fried chicken places. The noodles were bouncy though and well seasoned.
Of course we also had a serve of original topokki with mozzarella cheese. This was quite spicy, and generous in portion with a stringy cheese pull. There was a decent amount of rice cake which made the dish quite filling but there wasn't much else by way of topping. I also found the original soup to be very sweet and very spicy.
The rose topokki appeared to be a far better version of the dish with a fair amount of chopped sausages and sliced cheese on top. The sauce was far creamier and had a savoury umami flavour to it. I would definitely come back for this.
Of course, the main reason for us going to Sinjeon was for their kimbap and we ordered quite a few to try among the table.
This was the spam kimbap. Obviously it contained spam along with some tofu strips and assorted pickles. I liked that it didn't have a lot of rice but it had a lot of fillings. The rice was adequately seasoned with sesame oil and sprinkled with sesame. Although spam is quite strongly flavoured the pickles balanced it out very nicely.
We also had the tuna and the cheese kimbap. Truth be told, I was really looking forward to the cheese kimbap but that was a bit of a miss because the cheese was cold and not particularly stringy whilst the rice wasn't very well seasoned, making for quite a bland roll. My favourite for the night was in fact the tuna kimbap, striking the perfect balance between creamy tuna, crispy carrots and cucumber as well as the seasoned pickles. Again there wasn't too much rice and a generous amount of filling. I will definitely be back to try their other dishes.
Taste: 8/10
Value: 8/10
Service: 8/10
Environment: 8/10
No comments:
Post a Comment