Jang Mo Jib - Burnaby, Canada

On the weekend we were in Vancouver, we got together with  friends and met up for dinner. Destination : Jang Mo Jib, Burnaby. I was excited about this since some of those friends are Koreans so if they picked this place it must be a good sign.

When we got there that rainy night the location had small parking lot which was full. So we had to park on the street. Surprisingly the restaurant wasn't very full. But the size was more like a Denny's style diner instead of mom and pop restaurant so it could handle bigger capacity.

We were brought menu as soon as we sat down but I didn't even bother to look at the menu since we had Korean friends with us. Let them do the ordering. They settled with haemul pajeon (seafood pancake), gamja tang (potato stew) and bulgogi. I thought it wouldn't be enough since the gamjatang was only for 3 people.  The rice brought out was only four. One of our friends said that they charged $3 for each bowl of rice. That's how they make money according to them. But we don't really need a lot of rice since the gamjatang came with huge chunk of potatoes.

The seafood pancake wasn't too special. Not enough seafood but it was crunchy since the top had scattered shredded potatoes. Interesting. I had seafood pancake at a few other restaurants before but it didn't taste like this. This one is thinner and slightly crunchier.

The bulgogi was served with tons of sliced onions and rice cakes. That's also new to me. But I guess each restaurant has different way of doing same dish. When we go to Korean restaurant we seldom order bulgogi so I don't care for much of this one either. But I think the whole dish didn't have much meat compared to the onions.

I would say the highlight of the dinner was the gamja tang. That was our first gamjatang experience so I was easily impressed. First the waiter brought us one of those portable propane stove. Then the gamja tang was brought out on a big shallow pot. Of all the stuffs in the pot, the one thing sticking out was big chunk of bones with meat. According to our friends it's pork neck/spine bones. Those bones were already cooked and was just rearrange on the pot with red pepper powder, green onion, slices of onions, slices of serrano chillies, perilla leaves and perilla seeds. Hubby was in charge of manning the stove since he sat closest to it. He laddled soup and slowly mixed all the red pepper powder and other ingredients into the broth. Then we
sort of let it boiled for a good ten to fifteen minutes while we enjoyed other dishes.

When it finally boiled for quite a while then the gamjatang was finally look well mixed and fiery red from the red pepper powder that had blended in. The bones was boiled for hours so the meat came off easily. Even the big chunk of bones wasn't too hard to separate. The broth was not spicy enough (for my taste) but flavorful. Even though our friend warned us that it was spicy but since we are used to spicy food that wasn't a problem at all. I went for second round. And by end of the night I was looking up recipe for it, ready to try it at home myself.

I didn't take pics myself that night. A few pics below courtesy of Wikipedia and Mykoreankitchen.com.



Jang Mo Jib
5075 Kingsway, Burnaby
(604) 439-0712

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