주막 Joomak Restaurant @ Upper Bukit Timah Road

This place is located at Level 4 of Beauty World Centre. Took bus #67 from CCK interchange and dropped right in front of the overhead bridge to Beauty World, and the bridge connects directly to level 4. How convenient is that? We passed by Dulukala Peranakan Restaurant, and this place is right after Pink Candy, another Korean snack shop.

restaurant facade

We went in and seated ourselves. Seemed like the restaurant owners were busy so we had to wait quite a bit for the menu.

menu

FT Island on the wall

hangul characters

I really wanted to try the jajangmyeon (짜장면 / 炸酱面) and fried chicken but jajangmyeon wasn't available that day and my dining companion is absolutely against fried chicken.  Sigh. So we decided to order one ginseng chicken soup (samgyetang 삼계탕) and a seafood pancake (haemul pajeon 해물파전). The price in the menu are all nett prices. Drinks 'menu' is written on the wall. Typically, the diners there are mostly Korean families or couples. There were only one or two tables that were non-natives on our day of visit.

The favourite drink on the table seemed to be makgeolli (막걸리). The content is actually poured into a small kettle and the 'cups' are small roundish shallow bowls of the same material of the kettle. Here's a picture from someone else's site for illustration purposes. My dining companion wasn't keen to drink, so we didn't order any. The Korean family next to our table added Sprite to the concoction. Ooh, probably will try it at home next time!

cold drinking water (free)

Our order of samgyetang arrived first, but the side dishes (banchan 반찬) did not come till much much later.

ginseng chicken soup (삼계탕)

one whole small chicken

flavored salt

Spoons and chopsticks are in a container on the table, so please self-service.

getting ready to eat

The ginseng chicken soup was healthy tasting. In fact, it was rather mild, so the salt came in handy. The chicken stuffing consist of one good sized ginseng, red dates, garlic and glutinous rice. Lots of green onions in the soup as well. Liked the soft glutinous rice that had absorbed all the essence of the chicken and ginseng.

glutinous rice

There were 8 types of side dishes served that day.

banchans (반찬)

The Korean family next to my table was quite amused by me taking pictures of banchans. Probably a little difficulty to understand why someone would want to photograph ordinary side dishes that they've been eating on a daily basis.

Spicy side dishes

I don't know what's this, but it tasted like spicy 金针菇

kimchi

Non-spicy side dishes

steamed egg

beansprouts

anchovies

shitake mushrooms

fishcake strips

Enjoyed all the side dishes but my favourite ones were the fishcake, the unknown spicy one, kimchi and beansprouts.

Mr Kim sajangnim was busy cooking that night. He only came out once in a while to serve the customers.

The haemul pajeon took the longest time to cook. But it was such a pretty plate when it came.

seafood pancake (해물파전)

Aren't these pretty? Reminds me of spring!

Although its name was seafood pancake, the only prevalent ingredients were spring onions and squid. The pancake was also kind of undercooked on its inside. Not sure if that's how it was meant to be?

not sure what's inside this mixture, but recommended to dip the pajeon in this

squid peeking out

We paid $35 for 2 pax and we ate well that night. 잘먹었습니다~

Here's the link to second visit.