Korean barbecue and pork fans, what if I tell you that there's a place that serve you pork belly in 8 (yes, spell that eight) different marinades? Cheers, now Christmas can happen everyday ;)
The name 'Gomawo' itself is actually a korean slang for 'thank you'. It's about the passion of one of the founders, who dedicated himself to learning the art of Korean grill and cooking, that he spent not less than a year in Seoul, South Korea to learn from the locals. Talk about dedication there!
Anyway, just to share and illustrate what little experience I had with Korean food, actually before I started blogging, Korean food never made my list of craving. At most I would know of bibimbap and that's about it. Well, it's not that I don't like meat or Korean grill, but my friends and family were never that adventurous to eat at a Korean restaurant, much less at a Korean grill.
In Jakarta, it is an undisputable fact that Senopati and its vicinity is an area packed by expats and quite curiously, Korean expats. Hence, that area has one of the highest density of Korean restaurants. Nonetheless, a Korean grill in other parts of the city like north Jakarta is not unheard of, such as in Pantai Indah Kapuk's (predominately indonesian chinese residential area) thriving food hub. One of them is Gomawo Korean Grill & Restaurant, which I'd visited sometime ago.
Gomawo's menu is dominantly meat (like duh!), various choices of different parts of beef and pork, and non-meat Korean traditional food such as ramyun (noodles), jigae (soup), twigim (tempura), ddeobokki (topokki / rice cake), bibimbap, japchae, etc.
If you are not keen on getting hot and dirty, you can ask the staff to grill the meat for you, but of course it'll be much less fun than flipping your own meat! Gomawo's grilling pan is quite unique, as you can actually cook something inside the 'pit' surrounding the grill. Like what we did, we cooked some scrambled eggs, kimchi and onion inside the pit. While our mouths were busy munching on the small assorted 'banchan', our 'itchy' hands started messing with the 'pit' along the grill. So we cooked some scrambled egg, garlic, onion and even kimchi! Well, actually there's no need to cook the kimchi, but our hands were just curious & bored from waiting lol...
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| The table was full (with banchan) before the meal even started! |
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| Some of the banchan served: marinated baby potatoes & milky corn |
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| And then finally, the meat arrived... |
8 Flavours Samgyeopsal - thin slices of pork belly in 8 different marinades: garlic, curry, honey, wine, herbs, cheese, seaweed and gochujang. This is the signature and must-order item on the menu. It's like a dream come true for pork belly lovers! If you're feeling Korean, eat the grilled meat like a true Korean would: with a fresh vegetable wrap, add kimchi and a little chunjang, just like what I did below.
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| Those perfectly grilled pork belly... *drools |
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| Eat em like a true Korean! Add kimchi, lettuce and chunjang |
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| Gomawo Bulgogi IDR 99,000 |
Having eaten all the grill meaty stuff (which are 'heaty' according to Chinese), we ordered some soup to cool down the system, with these soups:
- Galbi Tang > beef spare ribs soup with white radish, leek, garlic and ginger
- Samgyetang > young chicken soup, with ginseng, sticky rice and nuts.
I'm quite pleasantly surprised that both the soup were tasty and the meat so tender, they fell off the bone! Each soup was enough to share among 2 persons.
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| Left: Galbi Tang IDR 99,000 Right: Samgyetang IDR 99,000 |
Buldak Chicken - stir fried 'fire chicken' topped with melted mozzarella cheese, with choice of spiciness level from 1 - 10. It was not bad, but it's just that I've had a slightly more addictive chicken buldak than this one.
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| Buldak Chicken IDR 80,000 |
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| Jumeok Bab IDR 26,500 |
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| Gomawo Bibimbap (pork belly) IDR 58,000 |
Dessert, now where's the dessert? I can't live without it? But seriously, after the huge meal we've had, I was actually quite grateful that there's no dessert on the menu. This is PIK after all, where the nearest dessert stalls are only a stone's throw away, quite literally. There are proper and nice dessert houses around PIK, so the absence of dessert on Gomawo's menu is not a problem. But if I recall correctly, I remember seeing Korean ice cream on display at the restaurant. I may have been mistaken, so just ask the staff.
For all the treats, Gomawo is reasonably quite affordable for the quality and quantity that you get.
*) Prices are subject to Government Tax & Service Charge
Gomawo Korean Grill & Restaurant
Rukan Crown Golf Blok B No. 32A-33
Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) - North Jakarta
Ph: +6221 29525858
Facebook: Gomawo Korean Grill & Restaurant
Twitter: @Gomawo_ID
Instagram: @Gomawo_ID
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