Sarang, Orchard Central

I was never a fan of korean food, but regardless it was a friend's dinner choice before his one week sabbatical to Nepal. This interesting spot lies atop Orchard Central (you know, that strangely empty mall next to 313?) - interesting how? I suppose it's one part overlooking a good portion of Orchard area if you sit close to the edge, one part non-stop display of scantily-clad women (and occasionally effeminate men singing about less pants) in their respective korean MTVs on the projection screen.

They served this strange green cracker - looks like what you'll get if you deep fry rigatoni and rolled it in green coloring and seaweed. I suspect it was supposed to be seaweed crackers but twas pretty tasteless to be honest!

Determined to get a little drunk we settled for the Makgeolli ($20 for 750ml) - milky sweet rice wine - before the influx of Soju later. My first korean rice wine - it is actually, rather sweet and milky, and tastes a little like stronger beer. Was pretty interesting sipping this in the bowl-cup things that you were supposed to drink them in, with Wondergirls providing mild distractions in the background.

Chicken Bong Bong was a Szechuan style dish with peanut sauce and cucumber.

That, however, clearly looks like fried chicken.

As I later found out, it was supposed to be [Chicken BonBon] - I guess to the gastronomically aware the menu typo can be rather confusing, but regardless the fried chicken was rather epic phail in my opinion. It tasted rather unspectacularly like those instant fryable chicken you can pick up from the freezer section, albeit with a little spice on it. For almost $10 you get 2 full wings and a platter of average fries, rather a disappointment I must articulate.

The Budae Jjigae (or army stew) was rather lovely though - the soury spicy kick of the hot stew soup coupled with 'modern day ingredients' [quote] wikipedia [/unquote] such as hot dogs and spam, I thought it was much better than my chicken stew to be honest!

After an evening of subliminal marketing courtesy of 3 hours of korean MTVs, we finished the meal with another bottle of soju and left half drunk lamenting about the artificial perfection of korean women.

Though again not being a fan of korean food and kimchi as a whole, I may be rather biased in my judgement - but I have had much better korean food elsewhere so this did leave a lot to be desired!

HGW Link : http://www.hungrygowhere.com/singapore/Sarang__Orchard_Central_/
Rating (out of 4) :