Song Cook Korean restaurant review

There are so many great Korean restaurants at Yonge and Steeles, one of my good friends introduced me to this place...

Service was fair, the waiter was nice and provided enough utensils for us but the kitchen was quite slow. (I actually thought the waiter looks a bit like Lee Min-Ho ^____^).

The interior was very "Korean". There were 2 sides: one side where you had to remove your shoes and sit in "booths" and another where you sat in normal chairs... since we were a large group, we were escorted to a room which looked like a small hut.

The food was generally good. Below is my 2 cents (with some description) of the food items we ordered.

HaeMulPaJan Seafood pancake $17.99

A Seafood and green onion pancake with vegetables is a bit expensive compared to other Korean places but it was really good.

Impressions:

• Very crispy
• Thick
• Large
• Lots of octopus
• Octopus/squid was slightly over cooked

see the thickness of the HaeMulPaJan

This picture does not show exactly how much more thick this pancake (HaeMulPaJan) actually is (I tried to take a better picture but I was at an awkward angle).

I enjoyed taking a bite out of the crispy outer layer and getting the savoury chewy inner layer. The inner was very well moistened... there was a lot of seafood!! My only complaint is that the squid and octopus was slightly overcooked... so it made them a bit hard to chew through....

SamGehTang (Full) $17.99

details:
SamGehTang

(Full) $17.99

Ginseng chicken soup with dates, chestnuts, yellow root and pine nuts with rice

This was a very disappointing dish.... for $17.99 (full), the serving size was very small... we shared it among 6 people... we each barely got a bowl full of this.... (as shown in the picture... this is what my "full" bowl looked like).

Impressions

• Very plain
• Tasted like water
• Largely any ingredients
• Contained pine nuts and dates
• No ginseng 
• Small amount
• Not worth

If that was not bad enough, the soup was practically tasteless, almost like water... none of the ingredients' flavours came out... (If we didn't find the ingredients like: dates, chestnuts and pine nuts at the bottom of the bowl, we wouldn't have known they were really there). There was also no ginseng... or any ginseng flavour... this was extremely disappointing.

KalBiJim (s) $13.99

Details:

This is a dish which is delicately marinated fall-off-the-bone steamed beef ribs with carrots and radish

These KalbiJim braised ribs were so tasty (especially after that horrible ginseng chicken soup). These ribs were stewed to perfection, the meat falls off the bone by just touching it with your chopsticks.

impressions:

• Very savoury
• Meat was well marinated slightly sweet and salty
• Very tender my chopsticks tried to pick the meat up and it all fell apart

The meat was very tender and infused with all the ingredients... the carrots and radishes were so well done too... they were soaked in the broth. It tasted really home made too!

Jajang Myun $7.99

details:

This is one of their popular noodle dishes made with ground beef, veggies and black bean sauce

impressions:

• Lots of black pepper
• Lots of sauce
• Sweet tasting

There is definitely a reason why this is such a popular dish... it is so good! The black pepper empowers the experience of the taste so well, the noodles are cooked to a perfect chewy texture. The bean paste sauce is infused with lots of sweetness and the black pepper's "spiciness" makes it a really great experience to eat. 

wasabi sauce

There was a complimentary Wasabi sauce... I'm not sure which dish is this for... but we were all interested in it... (it is quite good)

Five Spices Jokbal $23.00

Description
Five Spices Jokbal

Tender seasoned pork hock, served with sliced garlic, peppers and dipping sauce $23.99

Impressions:

• Large amount
• Made very well

By the end of all those items, we were already full... so when this came, we were absolutely shocked at how huge the dish looked. The serving size of this dish was really huge! There were garlic clove slices and green hot peppers to complement this dish.

We didn't try to pair this with garlic clove slices or the green hot peppers, instead, we tried to pair it with the wasabi sauce, and it tasted quite good (we weren't sure if they were supposed to be paired together, but we tried dipping in what other sauces on the table).

One thing is, if you are dining at this restaurant, they give you all the sauces you need for your entire meal before hand, so what we had to do each time was experiment and guess which should be dipped in what.

The meat was really well made, they gave us different types of the pork feet.

radish

Loved this radish, it was complementary, and it was really tasty.

Verdict:
This was quite a good dining experience, I thought the food was a little pricey compared to other Korean places though... I would avoid the Ginseng Chicken soup (SamGehTang) next time for sure, but will definitely order the other items, especially the JaJang Myun!

score: 8/10

address: 72 Steeles Avenue West #6 Thornhill, Ontario 

phone number: (647) 678-8000

website: http://www.songcooks.com/