A VERY HEALTHY Korean dinner at Gaia Korean Restaurant

If you were to ask me to describe this dinner, I'd think of this phrase "backside very itchy." LOL In case you don't know what it means, it is a sarcasm translated directly from this chinese phrase "屁股痒！"

It all started with me craving badly for Korean food yesterday night. I felt so hungry that the minute I thought of food, Bibimbap came to my mind. Bibimbap is the kind f hot stone rice with egg york and lots of different types of vegetables where you will mix with chili bean paste and eat it straight from the hot stone bowl. My only exposure to Korean cuisine were the bibimbap that I always have at Bugis Junction food court and the hot plate black pepper beef at Raffles City food court that my father used to bring me so often. Anyway, I couldn't sleep and spent half of the night online-searching for restaurants that serve authentic Korean cuisine. I went to hungrygowhere.com.sg and Gaia Korean Restaurant is the one that is highly recommended with good review. "Gaia Korea Restaurant shall be it!" I told myself and des went to make reservation.

Being so excited about our first time having authentic Korean food, des and I went straight to Suntec City right after our movie. I read from the review and it is stated that the food is so good and healthy at the same time. It just made me happier since I'm supposed to be on diet!

The restaurant is owned by a middle-aged couples and the waiters there are mainly Koreans! Very cool indeed. You know they serve authentic Korean food because there are so few choices from the menu and the Korean names just made it sound so complicated.

In the end, we decided on just a bibimbap, beef soup and a seafood pancake (since they are highly recommended in the reviews).

We were so excited ok!
While waiting for our main dishes, side dishes were served. Looks so good right? But honestly, other than the homemade Kimchi and Lotus Roots, they just tasted funny. The taste was very simple and hard to describe. There was nothing unique to it but you see, maybe that's the taste of authentic Korean fare.

I asked des if he liked it, he said yes but I knew he was lying because he kept blinking! haha. Honestly, I don't like it too but I tried to refrain from commenting as I did not want to spoil my dinner mood. haha

The seafood pancake was first served. It costs around $18 and it's humongous! 5 eggs were probably used to make this. But the thing about this pancake is, it tastes a bit like oyster omelet as the base is like dough texture and the top is egg.

Again, nothing special about it. I thought it's written as seafood pancake because I can find prawns and squids in it but I can only find very few pieces of squids with lots of spring onion. Not savoury enough. :(

Next was the beef soup. It came bubbling and I looked forward to tasting it. I watched too many Korean drama where you see the mother-in-law scooping one big scoop of bean paste and stirring in the pot of boiling water. Next thing you know, your tummy will be grumbling and craving for that bowl of soup. I was initially glad to see that the soup matched the one that I always wanted to try. It contained lots of vegetable, tang hoon (glass noodle) and beef. Indeed, it does look appetizing in the photo but honestly, I'm disappointed once again!

There was only 4-5 small pieces of beef slices (absolutely tiny ones, so small that I think some probably dissolved along the way). The soup is not rich like those we had at Japanese restaurants where the menu reads beef soup and you really taste beef in the soup. This, tastes of chili powder and plain water. Yum Yum *sarcasm*

Just when I lost hope of this dinner, the bibimbap was served. Not bad afterall but I doubt anyone can go wrong with preparing this dish. It's easy to prepare and practically involves no fuss at all. The chili bean paste an be bought commercially so we had no complaints about it.

In conclusion, we found the dinner too bland, disappointing and expensive.

1. Maybe, authentic Korean food is supposed to taste like this.
   
2. Maybe, I did not do enough research or try other restaurants before.
3. Maybe, the reason why they served only 5 tiny mini beef slices is because they are trying to discourage people from eating beef as cows fart too much and the gas will contribute to global warming and the restaurant is just trying to save Gaia as the name suggests.

I'm crazy but I'm sure I will just stick to food court Korean food as it's more suitable for my tastebud. To make sure that our tastebuds were still functioning after such a bland meal, we went straight to get ourselves ice cream.

Yes, ice creams taste so much better than the meal.