cooking. eating. carousing.: man doo hyang yukgaejang

The title of this post may seem a bit nonsensical to you, like a jumble of random Korean words I pulled out of a hat, but it's not. Let me explain. Man Doo Hyang is a Korean restaurant in Mississauga, Ontario. And yukgaejang is Korean for spicy beef soup, which was what I ordered when I was in said restaurant.

You might have remembered that I previously raved about another Korean restaurant in Ontario. Man Doo Hyang is somehow of a different calibre to that one. Man Doo Hyang is more of a family oriented restaurant. When we were having dinner in the early afternoon, it was filled to the brim with Korean families, with lots of kids running around and such. But service was by no means inattentive, of course the waiter bell on the tables did help to move service along.

The food was very traditional and concentrated more on subtle flavours, rather than bold, punchy, in-your-face flavours. I ordered the yukgaejang, which consisted of soup with shredded beef, bean sprouts, green vegetables and eggs. The soup itself was not too spicy, but because it had so many different ingredients with different textures that it almost did not need to be overly spicy, otherwise it would just overshadow the complexity of it all.

Yukgaejang - $8.99

The soup was accompanied with black bean rice served in a hot stone bowl. The rice was scooped out of the stone bowl and served in a plastic bowl. The rice crust that had formed at the bottom of the stone bowl was then softened with hot tea for me to eat afterwards. This was another reason why I said that the place is a traditional Korean restaurant. Eating here somehow reminded me of the Korean friends I've made over the years, made me miss them just a little bit.

The husband ordered the jajangmyeon, which was handmade noodle topped with seafood, wood ear mushrooms, baby corn, bamboo shoots and black soybean sauce. The portion on this dish was enough for 3 people. It was what a jajangmyeon should be, great al dente noodle, salty sticky black bean sauce with great textures from the bamboo shoots and wood ear mushrooms. Although, in my opinion, they could have used fresher prawns as theirs were a bit dry.

Jajangmyeon - $13.99

But, no good Korean restaurants would be complete without the banchan (english: side dishes). We had the omnipresent chinese cabbage kimchi, a mini dish of yeolmu kimchi (english: radish kimchi) and I think some shredded jícama. They were not too spicy and prepared our palate very well for the mains.