Ju Shin Jung, West Coast Highway, Singapore

After a slow process of overcoming my irrational phobia of Korean food (because I had way too much of it in Seoul at the begining of the year), I was inspired enough by a recommendation from a friend to try out Ju Shin Jung at 27 West Coast Highway for some pretty "authentic" Korean charcoal barbecue.

The spread of side-dishes is quite impressive here, surpassing even some of places I went to in Korea. If I'm not wrong, the side dishes here are replenishable at no charge too but we only had the capacity for one round. Both their fermented and semi-fermented kimchi are quite good although it could have been spicier and "smellier". They didn't have a side-dish here which I missed abit though, the fermented crunchy white radish.

But they did have chilled Jinro shoju here in nicely chilled litte shoju glasses. The good memories of drinking shoju in a barbecue joint in Seoul at 2AM came back bit by bit with every sip.

The first of the three meats to arrive was the daeji (marinated pork), this was perhaps the least remarkable of the three and was marinated just slightly too sweet for my liking. Still it was tender and quite succulent even after being barbecued.

Although the galbisal (beef shortrib) wasn't super fresh (notice the brownish edges on some pieces) the generous and even marbling of fat still triggered some salivation.
This was the best amongst the three with each morsel full of beefy juicy tenderness. I like it out there placed the cooked portions on the onion to prevent overcooking so not only do I get to lick the plate when I'm done, I get to eat it too haha.

Enter the woosul (beef tongue), nicely laid out on the wood platter you can see the razor sharp slices across the tongue exposing all the glossal intrinsic muscles (I googled the medical jargon haha).

Although they weren't sliced as thin as I hoped for I kept the faith in hoping that they would be tender enough. Unfortunatly, they weren't as tender as I hoped for either. Still, it was rather tasty and I've never really minded a good chew. Dipping this in the lemon and salt provided and washing it down with shoju is a pretty good combo.

Well, overall we quite enjoyed this meal especially after my long hiatus from Korean fare. A few things to note about this place, they cook the food for you although I'm sure if I asked to do so myself they would oblige. There's a playhouse for you to dump your kids at whilst you enjoy your meal, I'm not sure about the quality of the games in there but I did spy a nostalgic pen of plastic balls. If there's only one gripe about this place it would be their corkage arm-twister because they charge 15SGD per bottle of corkage which makes it economically not feasible at all to bring in my own Jinro (16SGD); they sell theirs at 25SGD. I miss the ones in Korea at under 5SGD. This meal fed two (including alcohol) for about 150SGD, not really the cheapest meal you can get in Singapore but still significantly cheaper than the barbecue meals I had in Seoul which averaged about 200SGD every time.

D

p.s: Other things to note here are the sweet cinammon tea they serve for dessert and the dried towels which expand when you add water to it.