Fuss-free Korean comfort at Joong San

NEW RESTAURANT

Joong San 28 Stanley Street, #01-01 Singapore 068737 Tel: 8493-0928 Open for lunch and dinner Mon to Sat: 11.30 am to 3.30 pm; 5.30 pm to 10.30 pm. Closed on Sun.

[SINGAPORE] Just as you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince, you need to eat a lot of banchan to find the Korean restaurant of your dreams.

There are more K-restaurants in Singapore than you can throw your Netflix K-drama subscription at – so when the latest one comes with a thumbs-up from your bona fide Korean buddy, you know you have to try it. And judging by the crowd outside Joong San on Stanley Street at lunchtime, you can only conclude: the food is either very good, very cheap – or more people than you think have friends who are real Koreans.

When you’re not a CBD-ite, navigating this Telok Ayer stretch at mealtime can be a harrowing experience. It’s like being caught in a twisted Squid Game challenge, with starving players who have only 60 minutes to devour and pack in an entire day’s worth of office gossip before the lunch hour bell rings.

You have to force your way through keropok-buying lines and biryani queues to get to the relatively quiet end of Stanley Street where Joong San is. But having a reservation doesn’t mean you can get in on time. You have to wait for the squid gamers still inside who might have traded one of their kidneys for another 15 minutes of banchan refills. But once you get a taste, we can’t say we blame them.

It isn’t often that the best things in a restaurant are served on the house. Before you can say, “I didn’t order this”, your table is covered with barley rice, seasoned bean sprouts and earthy bracken shoots –  complete with seaweed sheets and fragrant sesame oil. Resist the temptation to polish it all off, especially with three kinds of equally good kimchi on the side. 

You get unlimited servings, and “it’s free”, confirms the buff Korean server with a soft accent to his English. He’s too busy for niceties so you settle for brisk efficiency instead. There are just too many people packed into the no-frills eatery that’s a spinoff of the popular Um Yong Baek – said to be the mothership for homesick Koreans. And Singaporean wannabes.

Joong San has a different personality for night and day. Dinner is BBQ, while lunch is designed as a quickie eat-and-go lesson in Korean food 101. It’s quick but not slapdash – not from the carefully written menu that takes pains to explain the philosophy of Joong San (essentially a long-suffering mountain tl;dr) and the ingredients that go into crafting everything from the soft tofu in the sundubu jjigae to the 100 per cent buckwheat noodles.

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Between the two, the jjigae wins. The spicy tofu stew (S$24) is red and hellish-looking but is surprisingly measured in its spice level. This deeply satisfying, rib-sticking broth is packed with sturdy yet scoopable fresh tofu, enriched with a raw egg yolk. Get the shrimp version for more shellfish oomph. Just ignore the shrivelled prawns – they’ve been sucked dry of their essence and left merely as evidence. 

On the other hand, the 100 per cent buckwheat noodles may be authentic but aren’t much fun to chew – fine if you’re on a soft diet but not if you want something higher on the “QQ” meter. Plus, the Pyongyang Naengmyeon (S$25) could use a refresher course in North Korea so it remembers how cold it should be – ours is only slightly cool, the otherwise delicate beef broth diluted by the ice that used to be in it.

Apart from a gomtang (beef bone soup) that isn’t available yet, there are just two more items on the lunch menu – pork bulgogi (S$17) and mung bean pancakes (S$13).

The former is cheap and good – a hot plate brimming with charcoal-grilled pork belly that’s been marinated just enough to reveal its smoky sweet accents, without overpowering the fatty but irresistibly marbled meat. 

Mung bean pancakes are thicker than jeon, with a savoury crunch that gives way to a fluffy mix of mashed mung beans, cabbage and minced pork. 

Be warned. Joong San’s poor ventilation leaves your clothes indelibly tainted with evidence of your lunch choice. Don’t go within hugging distance of anyone for the rest of the day – unless it’s someone you don’t like.

If we went purely by the pull of one’s banchan, Joong San’s princely power is assured. But kingdoms are not built on side dishes alone – there’s still the BBQ dinner to explore, noodles to chew on and broths to beef up. Get everything in place, and we’ll be a loyal subject too.

Rating: 6.5