Second visit to Shillawon

Made my second visit to Shillawon last Friday, making it my second trip there within the week. The meal there was unplanned as I was at Suntec City with my wife to get a refund from Carrefour for a box of expired eye drops. Yup, the international hypermarket chain carries expired eye care products. Do check the labels, very carefully, while purchasing stuff from Carrefour.

Let’s not have that unpleasant incident detract me from the main subject of today’s post – that being my meal at Shillawon. I have a feeling that there will be more posts of meals at this restaurant in the coming days.

One thing I realised during my second visit is that the lunch menu and dinner menu is quite different. There’s apparently more dishes served during lunch. More importantly, those dishes were what I considered reasonable price in my previous post. Gone were those dishes where grilled meats and vegetables (around $8 – $10+). Instead, the main dishes for dinner were focused on meat platters (prices starting from $10+ to $50+) for grilling.

Being a gout sufferer I can’t over-indulge in high protein foods such as red meats. Thus, I was quite disappointed to find the rather restricted choice of dishes available in the menu. After poring through the menu, I decided to fall back on another favourite Korean dish of mine – dolsot bibimbap (”dolsot” stands for the hot stone bowl which the dish is served in).

I love bibimbap for a simple reason. It’s a “fun” food to eat! There are not many dishes out there where the main dish allows the diner to “play” with the food. This act of play includes:

•  
  • Pouring the chilli paste sauce into the dish
  • Bursting the egg yolk – done sunny side up style
  • Using chopsticks and spoon to toss and mix all the ingredients up

All these are taking place even as the rice is still sizzling and cooking in the hot stone bowl. That’s what I call fun food!

Shillawon’s dolsot bibimbap is similar to what we can find at other Korean restaurants and normal foodcourt. It contains the usual ingredients such as soy bean sprouts, julienned carrots, julienned zucchini, mushroom, spinach, chicken, egg, chilli past, and rice.

For me, what sets one bibimbap apart from another is the holistic taste of the entire dish after everything is well mixed. Sadly, the dolsot bibimbap at Shillawon was a let down.

Taste wise, it’s not bad, but neither was it good. It was just so-so. In my opinion, the dolsot bibimbap at the Crystal Jade Chicken Ginseng BBQ is better. Crystal Jade’s version is more savoury and the chilli paste somewhat tastier. Another complaint I have against the Shillawon’s dish is the fact that despite all the meat dishes in its menu, the amount of chicken meat in my dish is pathetic. I had to fish around just to get a sliver or two to go with my rice.

The saving grace for Shillawon is its friendly and attentive staff. For dinner all entree dishes are served with the usual banchan. Another plus point is that the banchan is free flowing. Staff will offer a top-up once the dish is empty. There’s also a serving of fruit (watermelon, pineapple and honeydew) after the main course.

I was most pleasantly surprised when I was served a cup of tea at the end of dinner. My wife asked the waitress what was the drink as the cup was cold to touch and we had absolutely no idea what it is. We were told that it was persimmon tea. In the tea were slices of dried persimmon and pine nuts. They added a unique taste to this sweet and refreshingly delightful beverage. If nothing else, this cup of tea made up for my disappointment with my main course.

My advice to fellow Korean food lovers, if you are looking to satisfy your bibimbap craving, give Shillawon a miss. But this will not stop me from making more visits there, for There are still more dishes which I would like to try.

The “free-flowing” banchan at Shillawon. I love it…

Looks good. Pity the taste is just ordinary.

The persimmon tea is wonderful though.