食客 Ssikkek Korean Grill BBQ (Oriental Plaza)

Had seen this Korean BBQ place at Chinatown when my bus went pass before. Noted that This Fashion had finally closed down and seems to be replaced by something more useful. And then I walked pass it once and smelled the grilling meats. So did Lynn on a separate occasion. This aroma prompted us to arrange for a dinner there.

It's a buffet only restaurant. We reached pretty early about 6.30pm, before the crowd started. Our table was set up, and we headed for the buffet table. I picked up a full plate of meat - various parts and marinates of chicken, pork and beef. Also got lots and lots of lettuce. And kimchi. And some kind of braised chicken and fried Korean vermicelli to stave our hunger while our meats cooked.

Lettuce and kimchi

The meats

Meat cooking... woo hoo!!

We were so stuffing ourselves with the pork belly. And some random parts of beef. I couldn't quite remember which is which by the time I got back to the table. Because the meats were just left out at the buffet table, we didn't feel too good about not cooking the beef through. This resulted in many pieces of tough beef. Pork and chicken were doing much better. And I think we were too hungry and just kept putting things on the grill. Ended up accumulating a big plate of cooked food. Because we didn't eat as fast as we cooked, some got cold and became tougher...

Cooked meats

Subsequently a cooked food counter started, and we got ourselves a wrap. Don't ask me what this is doing in a Korean BBQ restaurant. All I can say is its actually quite yummy.

Beef wrap

The buffet also includes free-flow white rice (which we obviously skipped), and two kinds of soup. A seaweed clear soup, as well as a kimchi soup. I really liked the seaweed one and had two bowls. It was very light, and nicely counters the meat overdose I was doing to myself. Forgot to take pictures of those. Later part of the evening, fried rice cakes also appeared on the cooked food section. Since we were getting full, we only took one each to sample. Yummy.

Drinks were free flow, and this area had iced water, an overly sweet lemonade we diluted with water, and a selection of soft drinks. There's also a variety of salads and sides and some fruits available.

Overall I think the spread is pretty good, for the price ($26 ish maybe?). The place did get quite crowded later part, so better to go early if possible. Lynn's comment was that the Kpop songs playing in the background was quite mismatched with the Kpop concerts showing on the TVs. Think a fast song playing while the person on TV obviously looked like he is serenading to a love song....

The food is actually quite nice, but we prefer the Korean BBQ at City Square. Mainly because there's that really nice cold noodles available there, and that the meats there are brought out from the fridge only when you order them. Gives you a fresher, less fly-fed feel. But this one may be more value-for-money to some, since drinks is included. We are fine with iced water so that's not an issue to us. In both cases, you leave the restaurant really really smelling like BBQ... They really need to do something about the ventilation...