Korean BBQ at Chungdam makes you feel at home

NEW RESTAURANT

The House Chungdam 72 Duxton Road #01-01 Singapore 089531 Tel: 8336-2068 Open daily for lunch and dinner: 12 to 3 pm; 5.30 to 10 pm (11 pm on Fri & Sat)

WE ALWAYS thought: If only we could be a fly on the wall, just to listen in on other people’s conversations. But now we want to be the barbecue person at The House Chungdam, which forgets prepositions the way we forget our manners.

One of the unique selling points of this new Korean BBQ in Duxton Road is that someone grills your meat for you, so you don’t end up with carcinogenic lumps of charred protein because you were too engrossed in bitching about your boss to tend the fire.

But having perfectly cooked pieces of boneless short rib also means there’s a stranger – albeit a very nice one – at your table for most of your meal. So keep state secrets close to your chest, and stick to safe topics like your cavapoo’s last birthday party if you want to eat here.

Given the dime-a-dozen Korean joints just a street away in Tanjong Pagar, Chungdam needs to stand out. Ambience and comfort are some ways. Chungdam skews slightly upmarket, and pays attention to the fact that you don’t want people to smell your dinner on you when you leave.

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So they invested in a very good exhaust system that sucks in all the smells from the gas-fired grills at the tables. There are also cute individual charcoal grills at the bar with a scaled down menu.

The decor is very simple, with plenty of space between tables. It’s also very bright. Operating theatre bright. Do we order the house special beef set or a colonoscopy? You don’t want to be in charge of the cleaning here. There is no way you can explain to the manager that you missed a spot because it was too dark to see the dirt.

The anti-spillage plastic menu gives away its true nature as a rough-and-ready Korean dive. It seems the owners are from Seoul and the restaurant is named after the city’s Chungdam district, supposedly where the trendy eats are.

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The menu here is smallish. Different beef cuts priced from S$39 to S$72 – mainly Australian – and a handful of fatty pork options. There are some sides such as cold buckwheat noodles, jeon, stews and assorted sets at lunchtime.

Compared to a good Japanese yakiniku, the price and quality of the meat don’t stand out, even if you’re only comparing Australian cuts. The priciest is boneless short rib at S$72 a portion and that’s the best on the menu – tender with a bit of chew. There’s a marinated version (S$49) but we have an aversion to oxidised greyish meat in a sweet sauce so we prefer everything au naturel.

Besides, there’s free-flow banchan and condiments to season your meat to your liking. Ssamjang, curry salt, kimchi, preserved squid, sweet pickled daikon – and all the lettuce and perilla leaves you need to wrap the lot in.

By all means get the sets if you like the perception of value. We’re not sure about that but S$129 feeds two on a selection of boneless short rib – plain and marinated – and semi-frozen thinly sliced brisket which is dry and chewy. But you also get steamed egg and soya bean soup which makes us happy until they come. The egg is steamed high and dry, the soup an afterthought.

There are other distractions. Its version of yukhoe is named Tar Tar (S$37) or beef tartare after a K-pop makeover. Chopped raw beef is fresh and clean on the palate with a slightly sweet marinade, layered with smashed avocado. Cold noodles are fair, doing the bare minimum in a cool, tangy broth.

There’s a rather good potato cheese jeon (S$27) that’s not flat like most Korean pancakes. The spuds come from the mountains of Gangwon, by way of justifying the price. They’re finely shredded, mixed with bacon and cheese and served in thick fried wedges – too thick to get a good crunch, which is a shame because it’s a fun snack.

Hold out for the bingsu because the snowy-soft, milky shaved ice in mango and red bean (S$10) flavours are the perfect end to a pleasant, if unmemorable meal. The sweet red beans are homemade and the mangoes chunky and sweet. It’s not kakigori-pretty but you’ll be scooping up every last bit before you know it.

Service is personable and efficient at Chungdam, and the vibe is unpretentious, come-as-you-are. A stronger hand in the kitchen would help move up the cooking needle but all in, it’s one of those easy-to-please hangouts – which explains why it’s fully booked almost every night. It’s a house that tries to make you feel at home, and it’s hard to quibble with that.

Rating: 6.5