Authentic and great tasting Korean food is widely available in China. In fact, a minority of the people living in the Dongbei provinces are Korean by descent, a legacy of longstanding and close relations between China and Korea for numerous centuries. As such, one can easily find great Korean food with authentic taste that will even satisfy a pure Korean quite easily. Although, I must admit, this is much more easily done in north China than in the south where I am.
Jiaxinmao Shopping Mall (嘉信茂) is right below Walmart's China headquarters. Prior to Walmart's move there, the place was new and dead with the only life coming from
Sam's Club next door. Sam's Club, for the uninitiated, is like a members only warehouse style department store where shoppers gain slight discounts for purchasing in bulk. In practice, they sell the more or less the same stuff sold in supermarkets outside, except for a decent imported goods section. Price-wise, I do not see much of an advantage. Some items are cheaper and others are more expensive and I believe it all evens out. I do a lot of my shopping there because I love the spaciousness and the wide aisles. I also get most of my DVDs there since they cost slightly over 10 RMB for a recent movie DVD, I do not see why I should buy pirated ones.
Hannashan Korean BBQ (韩式烤肉) restaurant seems to be set up mostly for barbecued meats. I was there for a quick lunch and I did not want to go through that process. So we ordered a pair of stone pot rice dishes. Even then, we were presented with four appetizers which were artfully presented.
Kimchee, which is cabbage preserved in vinegar and Korean chili paste. I thought this was ordinary but it did whet up my appetite.
The boiled brocolli was artfully garnished with a slice of carrot and that provided me a nice photo opportunity.
I thought this shredded Chicken was excellent. Just the right blend of sour and spicy tastes.
The black beans were interesting. The beans were on the sweet side, simply boiled and coated with sugar and something else which I could not make out.
The mushroom stone pot rice arrived and unfortunately, it could not follow up on the excellent start provided by the four appetizers. The sauces were on the sweet side, and unfortunately, the rice was not fragrant enough. I think they were short on some of the traditional sauces used in this dish, as the dish was just sweet and flat.
The beef stone pot rice was no different. Sweet and devoid of other fragrant tastes associated with stone pot cooked food.
In all fairness, I did not try their specialty, the barbecued meats, so this should not be seen as a damning review of the Korean restaurant. For the sake of the excellent appetizers served, I shall make a second trip to sample their barbecue meats at some point in the future.
The address:
Hannashan Korean BBQ Basement One, Jiaxinmao Shopping Centre (next to Sam's Club), Nonglin Road, Futian District, Shenzhen 汉拿山韩式烤肉 深圳福田农林路嘉信茂广场负一楼山姆会员店旁
Directions there using my Shenzhen Food Map
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