My first visit to this quaint kitchenette tucked away at Don Antonio Heights on Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City was when Rep. Johnny Revilla got us all together for his birthday.
We were introduced to Grace Park, a Korean who spoke good Tagalog because she has been a resident in the Philippines for almost a decade. She owns Eomassan, a secret of a restaurant that’s been kept well for a couple of years now.
Grace has her restaurant basics covered as she makes her own kimchi and its variants. In front of the counter is a temperature controlled kimchi soup cooler, in which she keeps her homemade pickled preparations.
Dinner at Eomassan starts with your typical service of banchan or small dishes served all throughout the meal. Preserved and marinated vegetables and kimchi are brought together with baby potatoes glazed with chili and bean paste, chilled tofu sheets, and other tiny dishes of the day. Our group got seven dishes, a good sign that the house was more than generous to its guests. In Korean culture, the banchan, depending on the number of dishes served, gives an impression either good or bad on the host. When the small dishes served number fewer than five, the guests tend to think that the host is rude, unwelcoming, or under dire financial straits.
Grace’s kimchi and her preserved vegetables make her restaurant worthy of being called a kimchi restaurant. The grilled pork belly or samgyupsal is served with a mound of fresh vegetables and aromatic ketnip leaves that one rolls and dips into a sesame oil sauce with salt, pepper, and chili flakes. To contrast the richness and chewy texture of the pork belly, one can also have beef slices for grilling.
I recommend the cold noodles with vegetables tossed in a sweetish sauce of gojuchang or chili bean paste blended with sesame oil and corn sy-rup. One of Grace’s unique dishes is a long braised goat dish that is so tender it melts in the mouth. The slices of braised goat are dipped in a sauce made out of Grace’s personal recipe that features a combination of sesame oil, chili puree, gojuchang, and hot mustard. The tender morsels of goat meat, spiced up with chili and hot mustard, have only the slightest hint of game. It’s just perfect to wash it all down with bowls of unfiltered, almost milky rice wine called makkoli.
The chicken kalbi cooked on the table top is another highly recommended dish. Mix it with rice to produce what I would call a Korean version of jambalaya. I would also suggest you try the grilled mackerel and sanma or Pacific saury harvested from cold Korean waters. The richness of these fishes is a standout, nothing like that of their warm water Pacific cousins.
Sometimes Grace also serves dried herring fillets, preserved in oil, very much like our gourmet tuyo but with a different texture. Like many other Eomassan treats, the herring fillets are also wrapped and combined with vegetables.
For enders, it’s nice to just go next door to the Korean grocery that has a decent selection of ice cream, a perfect ending to a meal full of hot peppers and chilis.
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