First Korean dining experience disappointingly underwhelming

Described by The Guardian as ‘the best Korean restaurant in the country’ we had high hopes for our visit to Manchester’s Koreana. Having never tried Korean food we were looking for a culinary experience with a difference and, if the rave reviews were anything to go by, we weren’t going to be disappointed.
A word of warning. If your partner suggests driving into Manchester the night before a major cycling event just remind him how easy it is to travel by train. We spent a good hour driving round one way systems and avoiding the big hole blocking off half of Deansgate, at first confused by the fact that every parking bay in the city centre appeared to have been suspended. Then it dawned, the city’s streets were going to be closed off the following day to allow cyclists to celebrate the joy of travelling by two wheels. I almost wished I’d jumped on the bike myself when we finally made it into the new NCP car park at Spinningfields where a notice informed us that we would be parted with far too much of our hard earned cash to spend a couple of hours parked in the city centre on a Saturday evening.
We finally headed down the stairs into Koreana half an hour after our booking time but with the restaurant only a third full this didn’t appear to be a problem and we were shown to our table by the extremely friendly staff, all dressed in traditional Korean white aprons with bands of colourful embroidery.
Service was friendly and efficient and we quickly ordered a bottle of Argentinian Torrontes, sadly flabby and served without a wine cooler, alongside two Emily Bishop style ornate wine glasses and accompanying chilled tap water served unassumingly in half pint glasses.
After much debate, we opted for the set menu which offered five courses and was certainly well priced at £18.95 a head. My partner wanted to try a dish he had seen reviewed, the Bibim Bab which wasn’t on the set menu but which, after a small discussion, it was agreed he could have instead of the choice of main courses on offer.
For our first course we ordered deep fried seafood and the Gu Jul Pan which came served in a traditional four compartment bowl and consisted of deep fried chicken balls, deep fried beef in breadcrumbs, unusual mini pancakes and something else deep fried! Both dishes were disappointingly (and perhaps unsurprisingly) greasy and lacking in flavour.
Next came a bowl of beef consome with mini beef dumplings, themselves quite tasty but wallowing in an uninspiring and almost musty tasting broth. Edible but certainly nothing to write home about.
Our third course included a pair of delicious chicken kebabs, the meat cooked to perfection and dripping in a deliciously sweet teryake style sauce. The mini beef and potato pancakes I ordered (Gamja Buchim) can only be described as bizarre, especially the orange coloured ones which tasted like sweet potato gone wrong but were in fact made from Kimchi, a member of the same family as the Chinese Pak Choi.
So far totally underwhelming.
Our main courses showed some promise. I quite enjoyed my Beef Bulgogi - strips of beef marinated in soy, sesame, garlic, ginger, spring onions and pear, stirf ried and then wrapped in crisp lettuce leaves spread with the accompanying (again strangely musty tasting) chilli sauce. Fresh and tasty but I was disappointed to find some of the lettuce leaves adorned with a fine layer of soil.
After great anticipation, my partner tucked into his Bibim Bab, an earthen pot containing rice, noodles, seafood, chicken, pork and an almost fried egg which he was instructed to mix all together to allow the flavours to fuse. It was, he said, okay.
The highlight of the evening was the home made ice cream and sorbet we chose for our final course. The sour plum wine sorbet was tart and refreshing and the ginger ice cream was a zingy, divine combination of small chunks of ginger and creamy cardamom. Possibly one of the nicest ice creams I have ever eaten.
Despite ending on a high note, we were sadly underwhelmed both by our first experience of Korean food and by the Koreana itself. Nothing was exactly wrong with it (apart from a few minor slip ups in the service and of course the offending dirty lettuce leaves) but it just didn’t live up to expectations. If, as the Guardian says, it is ‘the best Korean restaurant in the country’ I fear greatly for the future of Korean cuisine.