Han Guk Kwan Korean Restaurant

In my 23 years of existence only recently did I come to know the joy that is, Korean food. It never occurred to me to experiment with it until a good friend introduced the cuisine to us. From then on, I was hooked! There was a distinct flavor in their food that was so new and refreshing to me, although I really cant quite put my finger on what it is. My palate was just so excited with being introduced to a new taste.

The first resto where we ever tried Korean food was at Han Guk Kwan. We've been to other Korean places around the city as well. But to date, we still couldn't find a Korean resto to match this one. Han Guk Kwan is located at La Guardia Lahug. It's right beside C24 by the Archbishop Reyes-Lahug intersection, you can't miss it.

Tried to take a picture of their panaflex but the glare from the fluorsecent lamps was too strong that it drowns out the text. Sorry for the bad image quality, just took this from my phone :(

The location is very accessible and parking is ample. The inside of the restaurant is very spacious as well and you rarely see people eating alone since their servings usually call for sharing.

For those who haven't tried Korean cuisine, you get a myriad of appetizers even before your main course arrives. And the best part is, its free and refillable! We ordered the budae jigae, sam gyup sal, and galbisal. Below is a diagram of our meal, sans the budae jigae which deserves a solo pic on its own later. Keep in mind that there is no specific set menu for the appetizers, they will serve you whatever they have available.

1- galbisal (beef ribs), 2- samgyupsal (pork belly, literally meaning three layered meat in Korean), 3- sesame oil + rock salt, 4- ssamjang (another form of sauce, whose taste I can only liken to bagoong but oddly enough, this sauce doesnt contain any traces of shrimp), 5- Korean salad (with the best vinaigrette dressing EVER), 6- tofu (sorry dont know how it was prepared), 7- beansprouts, 8- radish (I dont like this appetizer at all, sorry), 9- steamed egg, 10- garlic

In the background of the picture is also some lettuce which you eat with your samgyupsal and galbisal. Basically, how they eat their meat is different from how we eat ours. We pair it with rice but they like to wrap their meat around in lettuce. For reasons that I cannot fathom, it goes without saying in any Korean restaurant that these meat must be ordered in at least 2 servings. Don't ask me why.

Grilled meat (minimum or 2 servings)
Samgyupsal - P200 per serving
Galbisal - P400 per serving

Barbecue your own meat to your liking on their stone grill. When satisfied, roll your meat around the sesame oil with rock salt, lay it on your leaf and top it off with the ssamjang and roll. Voila! Thats how you eat your samgyupsal. You can opt to put kimchi, garlic or any of your other appetizers on top of your meat before rolling. Be creative and do whatever you want with your meat!

Finally here comes the budae jigae. This dish was concocted during the war. Its a high-calorie stew with crazy ingredients that I can imagine only a very hungry soldier can surely think of putting in. There's kimchi, spam, hotdogs, tofu, and some meat along with noodles. Talk about a heavy meal!

Budae jigae - P400
If you think this is heavy enough, wait till you get your two bowls of rice along with this dish!

The service in this restaurant is also good. They're very well-employed. So you almost always have a server at your attention. And being regulars of this restaurants, they already know more or less what we want so that's definitely a big plus.

All in all we spent P1,200 for this hefty meal . Normally it can feed around 4 people or so but my boyfriend and I have beyond normal appetites so we're an exception :p However this meal surely left us full to the brim! When we eat out with friends in this restaurant we usually shell out approximately P300-P500 per person and we always leave very much sated.




That wraps up my first official review. I hope I pursued you to try Korean food, for those who havent. I don't know if there's even somebody reading this blog but I hope in the future someone will hehehe :)