Mien Korean Style Chinese Restaurant, Eight Mile Plains, Brisbane
October 12, 2016
Having eaten at various Korean restaurant in different cities, sometimes it makes me wonder why there isn't one dedicating to its rice or noodle dishes. Of course, there has always been Korean BBQ and one that is a mixture of everything in between and even more such as the KFC aka. Korean Fried Chicken is getting the hype and many more are opening lately. When we stopped by Runcorn Plaza, opposite of Warrigal Square, we spotted a humble restaurant right at the corner, the closest restaurant to the newly refurbished IGA. What a suprise when most of their menu contained various stir fried dishes as well as rice/noodles bowls.
As usual, side dishes are brought out to your table before every meal and although you may have expected at least two or three different types of side dishes, here they only have one, which is the yellow radish. A refreshing side dish to balance and tone down your buds after every spoonful.
'Japchae-bap' was a combination of stir fried glass noodle with rice. Having always liked Japchae by itself either as an entree or as a main, I tend to usually have it as a main as I do feel that eating on its own can fill you up quite easily having sweet potato noodles as the base with various vegetables such as carrots, onion, spinach and mushrooms served with beef or pork, all combined and having a soy sauce and sesame oil based. A simple but delicious dish to have and when mixed with rice, it becomes a whole new dish, typically saying that it is served with a bed of rice when being served as a main dish. I did feel that it was too oily in terms of the Japchae itself but the amount of vegetables were much more generous than the beef itself as there were only a few which was disappointing.
Served with a bowl of Jjampong soup which is literally a spicy seafood noodle soup, one of the more famous Chinese-Korean dishes that is enjoyed all over Korea. Having some bits of seafood in the soup was a delight but there seems to be a bit too much chilli powder and powdery base at the bottom of the soup.
'Jajjang-myeon' literally means Black Bean sauce noodles, a noodle dish topped with a thick black sauce made out of a salty black bean paste with pork and vegetables. I have tried the other versions such as Taiwanese, Chinese, Hong Kong etc and some have been tasty while some may be abit too salty or bland. It is quite a simple dish to create at home but somehow I feel that when eating it at home and at a Korean restaurant, the feeling is just different. The meat used is usually pork but sometimes some may be just vegetables or other type of meat.
Some people may say that mixing all your food until it becomes a tad ugly may just ruin it for some visually. But those of you who knows that sometimes the yummiest food is always messy to eat while sometimes there will be those food that are just simply too pretty to even look at, more to eat. With this, the goal is to mix it altogether until the noodles has absorbed the black bean sauce and everything is covered. Although the black bean sauce was on point, not too salty but was actually quite good and having the chunks of onions and other vegetables made it have that combination of texture of crunchiness and smoothness. One downturn would be the lack of pork belly.
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