More-than-you-can-eat Korean dining at Sura

NEW RESTAURANT

Sura 60 Tanjong Pagar Road Singapore 088481 Tel: 6223 2289 Open for lunch and dinner daily: 11.30am to 3pm; 5.30pm to 10.30pm

THERE are a few ways to get a taste of Korea: get into the VTL, watch the food scenes in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha or eat at Sura - which looks like a normal, profit-centred restaurant, but behaves like an ajumma who can't stop feeding you like you're a pig she's fattening for winter.

We've driven by Sura several times before, attracted by its elegant facade but unwilling to risk checking it out, until someone we know went and returned suitably plumped up and happy about it.

It's not as fine dining as we expect, with promotional notices stuck on its auto doors and a large industrial canteen-like kitchen taking centre stage, negating its attempts at style with black granite-like walls and marble-ish tables. Copper grills embedded in the tables peg this as a Korean barbecue, except that there are a lot more extras that come with it.

Rather than army stew and tteok-bokki, Sura serves Hanjeongsik, or ancient Korean royalty's equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet. It's what the aristocrats of yore enjoyed - feasts of multiple dishes in as many colours, ingredients and preparation styles - that is now a convenient, one-meal crash course in Korean cooking 101.

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Just about every tidbit you've picked up from K-dramas appears, from seaweed soup to pumpkin porridge and even raw marinated crabs, the kind slurped by a chaebol patriarch at the dinner table as he berates his son for abandoning the family business in favour of a free-spirited girl he's in love with.

In reality, our culinary tour is guided by Michael Song, our jovial Korean server who speaks in rapid-fire English picked up from living in Singapore for the past 30 years. He convinces us to take the S$150 grill menu, which is the full-on Hanjeongsik with the addition of wagyu as a grill course. He also warns you upfront that there's going to be a lot of food, and it would do you good to take him seriously, or suffer later.

The meal starts off easily enough, with a pleasant pumpkin porridge - more like a sweet puree - and water kimchi that's a refreshing sour-sweet liquid with radish bits.

He introduces us to a slender stalk of fresh ginseng, looking like a really skinny beige carrot attached to a long stem, presented on a bronze platter on top of some moss. Deadly serious, he tells us not to eat the moss, relaying the unfortunate case of a lady customer who thought it was edible, and "I did not know how to tell her because it was already in her mouth, so now I tell people first it is only for decoration," he deadpans.

The ginseng itself is two-and-a-half years old, and you're supposed to roll it up together with the leaves, dip it into honey and chew on the earthy, medicinal and not terribly palatable stick of vegetation.

It's more fun to eat the fresh oyster from Jeju that's served alongside - fresh and meaty, good with a squeeze of lemon, and a little ball of mashed sweet potato covered with crispy fried bits.

They're part of a flurry of appetisers that appear in quick succession. There's a small abalone grilled in butter with a funky brininess that we don't like, and japchae glass noodles, which we do. So too the assortment of jeon or Korean pancakes, made with an assortment of mushrooms, tofu, Spam and crab stick. And a rainbow platter of Gujeolpan (nine delicacies) - coloured mochi-like skins for you to fill with 8 different kinds of shredded vegetables, mushrooms, omelette and beef.

But it's not like we're allowed to eat our fill as Michael, behaving like a coach training us in eating as an extreme sport, almost chides us for eating more than he warned us to, because of what has yet to come.

For all the restaurants that complain about rising food costs and the practice of giving as little as they can for as much as they can charge, we take our hat off to Sura for being the rare eatery that so whole-heartedly wants to feed you and give you more than your money's worth. It's not stellar cooking and the ingredients are nothing to shout about, but sometimes, goodwill and sincerity count just as much.

What we think is sashimi is just a precursor to the real thing. Cold seafood, mostly cooked, is presented in an elaborate garden setting - shrimp, salmon sashimi, waterlogged octopus, decent akagai, interesting Korean conch, and pungent uni that probably shouldn't boast about its Korean-ness.

Then the real sashimi appears - another pretty arrangement of 3 types of tuna and assorted white fish, eaten either with wasabi or Korean style dipped in sesame oil and salt and wrapped in seaweed.

A whole deep-fried rockfish follows, bathed in a clear sweet and sour sauce, almost Chinese style. There's a blob of marinated beef tartare that's an acquired taste, rolled with pear strips in seaweed. Then there's seafood hotpot, with scallop, mussels, squid and shrimp in a thickened clear broth with rice crackers to dip. Followed by a potent galbi jim or braised short ribs in a rich, sweet-savoury gravy with thick ginseng roots and melting soft pumpkin wedge.

With Michael egging us on, we plough through the lot, only to have him crank up the barbecue (which incidentally sounds like it's breaking wind, so don't point fingers at anyone) and grilling a piece of sirloin and tenderloin that he carefully cuts into bite-sized cubes. The hot beef is paired with cold mukbap with "aircon jelly" in a cold, spicy kimchi-like broth. What? "Aircon jelly, you know, what the squirrels eat?" "Acorn jelly?" "Yes, yes, you thought I said aircon? No no, aircon jelly."

Whatever, but it's surprisingly refreshing with the bland jelly against the tangy pickled vegetables and dried seaweed.

Even before we come to the final stretch of rice and condiments, and marinated crabs and shrimp, we're ready to cave in, with no room for a simple dessert of fruit and a bowl of sikhye - a sweet rice and barley drink.

It's a marathon of eating, but Michael's easy banter that is more entertaining than educational, makes it all the more enjoyable. Sura is just a beginner's guide to a style of Korean food that we know little about, but like K-dramas, we're in danger of getting hooked on it.

Rating: 6.5

WHAT OUR RATINGS MEAN

     10: The ultimate dining experience 9-9.5: Sublime 8-8.5: Excellent 7-7.5: Good to very good 6-6.5: Promising 5-5.5: Average

Our review policy: The Business Times pays for all meals at restaurants reviewed on this page. Unless specified, the writer does not accept hosted meals prior to the review's publication.