Happy Lunar New Year everyone! I’ve been pretty quiet on the blog for some time as I was really busy with work and moving office (we are now in Buona Vista).

But since I happened to go to a nice Korean place last week at The Star Vista for lunch for a colleague’s farewell and was pretty impressed with the service and also some of the food, I decided to do a quick post on this in between the usual festivities.

The restaurant was pretty empty when we went on a weekday afternoon. Service was really attentive and a manager (I think) came over to talk to us and made some recommendations on what to have. We decided to go with all these, which included some grilled meats, noodles, seafood pancake, and soups.

A nice selection of fresh vegetables were provided for us to wrap the flavourful grilled meats in, along with the banchan (Korean side dishes pictured above) and various sauces.

A dish I thought was really delicious was the Jap Chae (fried glass noodles with pork and vegetables, S$23). The same friendly manager informed us that the noodles are air-flown (by SIA cargo, no less) from Korea to Singapore so as to retain the authentic taste of the dish.

And of course, we also had some nice grilled meats. I was kind of worried that we would 1) have to cook these on our own, and 2) end up smelling like a piece of  bacon.

Thankfully, both fears were unfounded! The service staff kindly cooked these in front of us, manipulating a thick black pipe that could be pulled down from the ceiling to suck up smoke from the grill.

We had the Woo Samgyup (S$28 for 200g), thinly sliced beef brisket, the Ggot Sal (S$38 for 160g), beautiful chunks of marbled beef, and the Yangnyum Dwaeji Galbi (S$33 for 250g), flavourful pork ribs marinated in the house special sauce.

After which, they taught us how to wrap the meat in the fresh vegetables and sauces. I opted for lettuce, carrot, the frizzy leaves (forgot the name of it), flavoured leeks and radish as well as some Korean barbeque sauce.

And I liked it! The crisp, refreshing vegetables really complemented the oily, tasty flavours of the meat and made each bite balanced and enjoyable.

We also had some soups, the Seafood Tofu Soup (S$18) and the Kimchi Soup (S$15). Both were not as spicy as we thought seeing as how they were totally red). The former had a mild tofu-like taste and the latter, a rather sour kick to it which some of us liked.

To finish off the meal, we were served some Five Tastes Tea – which was a really refreshing mix of flavours like sour plum, cinnamon and other spices, which gave it a sweet, sour and salty bite to the nice iced tea.

We were all rather happy with the overall meal and finishing tea. All these dishes were certainly enough to feed the five of us and we all left feeling rather full and satisfied.

Food was pretty good and I’d rate service pretty high (though this was in an almost empty restaurant) – wouldn’t mind going back there again.

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Bornga
#02-24, The Star Vista
1 Vista Exchange Green
(there is another branch at Vivocity)

Tel: +65 6694 4696
Website: http://www.thestarvista.com/malls/website/store-details.aspx?id=4568

Open daily from 11.30am to 10.00pm.