Sa Rang Chae – Korean Food on Edmonds

Sa Rang Chae is located right next door to Osaka Island in a little mini-mall on Edmonds.  Lunch here during the weekday is pretty dead but at least that means that the food comes out pretty quick.

I’ve been trying to come up with a way to describe the food here but the only thing that comes to mind is “plain”.

I ordered a couple of items including the Hae Mool Soon Doo Boo ($8.95) – tofu and seafood soup.  I liked the fact that this soup came with a poached egg with the yolk still cooking and plenty of silken tofu.  The soup also came with onions, baby shrimp, squid pieces, and green onions but I found the soup itself to be lacking in any kick (I’m used to the broth being much spicier).

As is customary in Korean restaurants, they brought out some Banchan which included kimchi, broccoli with hot sauce, potatoes and carrots, and sprouts.  Overall, they were a bit standard but I found the potatoes to be too dry.

One of my go-to dishes is the Dolsot Bibimbap ($10.95) which comes served in a hot stone bowl.  When it arrived at my table, I was happier than a Smurf in a Smurfberry Bush…  That round yellow orb that you see in the picture below is a perfectly shaped raw egg yolk that bursted it’s yellowy goodness all over the rice.  They actually have another version of this dish with raw beef too.

Inside the bowl, there was also beef, carrots, veggies, sprouts, and mushrooms.  The whole concept of this dish is that the ingredients continue to cook in the hot stone bowl but, for some reason, the rice didn’t crisp up like it usually does.  Perhaps I stirred the rice too quickly or they didn’t put enough sesame oil in the bottom of the bowl.  Moreover, even though the ingredients seemed to hit the mark, there was something missing with the flavour of this dish – it just tasted a bit bland… and that was after adding the gochujang hot sauce.

Overall, there was nothing really terrible with the food here but each dish seemed to lack any significant flavour and was a bit plain – not something I’m used to with Korean food.

7613 Edmonds St
Burnaby, BC

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