Ddoo Gau Bee

Ddoo Gau Bee
203-4501 North Road
Burnaby, BC

OK, after a small break from Asian, with yesterday post of FatBurger, I am back with Asian again! ^_^;;; Fortunately (?), rather than sticking with only one area/country/region, I have been jumping back and forth. This time, I went for Korean. And, the most interesting part? Rather than a place in Downtown Vancouver or Kingsway, I went to an area of Vancouver I have started to expand: Lougheed, the border between Burnaby and Coquitlam. While Insandong is the most popular one, I dropped by Ddoo Gau Bee instead.

When I arrived, I was acknowledged by a waitress and guided me to my table. After that, I think the best can be described by Sherman in his recent post of Nor Boo: almost non-existent service. Now, I must remind everybody I am a person who does not really care much about service and, when I make mention of this topic, it is because things are really good or things went south in a catastrophic way. Yes, pretty much something happened here: I waited and waited and waited for them to take my order. In the end, I had to raise my hand… And waited easily for over a minute before another waitress noticed me. Was it really necessary? Now, before somebody tells me I should have “rung” to catch their attention, there was no such device in the table I was given. However, once I made my order, the food came pretty fast. And what did I order? OK, how about some pictures first?

Yes, that is a lot of food! However… I did NOT consciously order all that! I know I am a heavy eater but this was way more I would eat, specially considering it is mostly carbs. So, how come I ended up getting all this? It just happen that in their menu there is a hot special. However, it does not have an exact description; rather, there is a picture of what see above. However, at $10, I thought that most likely, there won’t be too much food so why not. In fact, I thought, why not order some ya ki man doo

OK, that’s a lot of food so how about what was actually on the plate? So, let’s try again: The black noodles is ja jang myeon (?), which is noodles with black bean sauce. Once the sauce was “mixed” with the noodles, it provided a light sweet taste (probably due to the onions used?) which worked in a strange way with the bite of the noodles. Not the best but it did not stop me from eating it. As for the jam pong (?), the one under the red broth was mostly meh. There was a piece of shrimp and a piece of octopus (literally) which served more as a token to tell you it had some seafood but nothing else. The noodles had a bite similar to that of the ja jang myeon (well, it is almost the same noodles!) but the almost tasteless broth did not work the same way.

The rice reminded me of omurice, that omelette filled with fried rice dish found in Japanese cuisine. The egg was really thin, which makes me wonder how it was made. Not too eggy, in fact it felt it was mostly token. The rice was moist, though, and had some vegetable broth-like taste. Otherwise, there wasn’t anything else in it.

The mandoo was interesting and plain at the same time. Similar to Chinese dumplings, they were fried rather than usual process of being steamed or pan fried and then steamed. Hey, it is fried so it should be great, right? Well, it *could* have. The problem is that the skin ended up still chewy. The filling was also disappointing, as it did not have that much of a taste, unless you tried really hard after almost dunking it into the dipping sauce. In that case, you could taste a hint of pork. C’mon, really?

Despite all the issues, I ate most of what I was served. Unfortunately, I regretted doing it afterwards, as I basically skipped dinner that night. I guess I am somewhat of a glutton. Argh… As for coming back, not in a hurry. While I am sure this dish isn’t too representative of Korean cuisine (still, the two tables next to me ordered it), it did not impress me either. It felt… Average. Oh, well…

Tagged under: Burnaby • Coquitlam • Korean