Gangnam Garden Korean BBQ (City Square Mall)

After our truffle-blissfulness at Ember, we hunted down truffle salt at the supermarket at Ion Orchard. Since it was pretty pricey for a small container, we decided to share. The plan was for Lynn to bring it home, split half of it into a zip lock bag and pass that to me. And since I had some errands to run at Jalan Besar, we arranged to have dinner at the nearby City Square Mall.

Initially we had wanted to eat something that will go well with the truffle salt that she brought out for me. Aston's queue was quite long, and this branch was particularly small, so we passed. We then thought of Saizeriya, a Japanese-Italian restaurant. Not wanting to limit ourselves, however, we decided to take a walk around to see what else City Square had to offer. Chanced upon Korean BBQ quite by accident. It used to be BBQ Chicken restaurant, and part of the signboard wasn't removed yet. So there I was telling Lynn that BBQ Chicken isn't nice, when she noticed the Korean BBQ signboard at the other end of the restaurant. We also caught a whiff of the smokey BBQ aroma floating out of the restaurant. Upon closer inspection of the menu, we found that it only costs $25.88 for their buffet dinner. Pretty good selection of meats, and with the aroma tempting us, we gave in.

The buffet included a good 70 items you can choose from, drinks not included. Some items require top-ups. We went for a first round of pork belly and chicken chop platter, plus cold noodles with soup and kimchi soup. I actually ordered a bibimbap but that was forgotten. These were served alongside crisp lettuce and 6 appetizers of kimchi, cucumber salad, two kinds of beansprouts, macaroni salad and coleslaw. The cold noodles were springy, and the cold soup very refreshing. Definitely a must-have. The kimchi soup was very diluted and forgettable. The platter was served with some golden mushrooms and shitake mushrooms. The girl did a very meticulous job of cutting all our meats into bite-sized pieces. We took a small spoon of our truffle salt out onto a plate. While the mushrooms tasted fantastic with the salt, the marinate in the meats completely drowned the truffle. So we realized that the truffle salt may be wasted, unless maybe we order more mushrooms. The meats were cut so small that we needed multiple pieces to get a good 'chew' when we wrapped them in the lettuce. Although the platter was supposed to have pork belly and chicken in 3 different marinates, I felt all of them tasted pretty much the same. 

We then noticed the Korean family beside us having the Bulgogi platter, and it looked a lot better than the pork belly one. So round two was the Bulgogi platter, plus a plate of fresh pork belly (unmarinated). The girl again started off the initial cooking of the meats, but we found that she failed to separate the thin bulgogi meats properly, so they were clumps of meat that were uncooked in the centre. We had to cut them with the scissors provided to get the centre cooked. Again all the marinates tasted the same. The highlight of the evening was the fresh pork belly. Because it was unmarinated, it was incredibly enhanced by our truffle salt. Every bite was heavenly, we had those blissful pauses. I think the other tables must be wondering what in the world we were eating that we were so thoroughly enjoying. Think pausing everything and closing our eyes to savor the truffle-filled flavor of the pork belly. We went for a second serving of the fresh pork belly. It was THAT good with the salt!

We were contemplating whether to order another cold noodles but decided to keep the stomach space for dessert elsewhere. We also saw the Korean family eating the hot plate bibimbap which looked quite good but we were too full to try. If I'm not wrong, that's available with a $3 top-up.

Appetizers

Green green lettuce

Pork belly and chicken chop platter with mushrooms

Cold noodles with soup

Kimchi soup

Fresh pork belly on the left, bulgogi meats on the right

Frozen pork belly serving #2

I think for the price, the variety is pretty good. The ventilation is limited though, so we did come out smelling of BBQ. For two of us, we were given a four-seater, so we were able to sit at the non-BBQ side of the table to limit smoke in our faces. If there's 3 or 4, 1 or 2 person will have to get face splatters. Their set up is pretty interesting with a hole in the centre of the pan for oil to flow out and collect into a little metal bowl. Makes you feel a little better about not eating that amount of oil. Lol... The marinates were getting a little too sweet towards the end. Next time I'll bring my truffle salt again and just attack the fresh meat. =D