Restaurant Review: Kaneda Japanese Restaurant

Last Saturday, a few of my friends and I dined at Kaneda Japanese Restaurant. Our initial plans were to  have hot pot but due to miscommunications with the restaurant, we couldn't get a table large enough. So four of us left to eat something else (not to mention it was quite a warm evening!).

We settled for Japanese food. We wanted to try Sushi Hotaru since quite a number of my friends have raved about it, but the line was way too long!

Kaneda Japanese Restaurant was close by and I had yet to try it.

Kaneda is located in the CBD in the Mid City Arcade on Bourke St. It's quite a small restaurant but it wasn't very busy when we arrived (~7:30 pm). The interior is lovely - plenty of Japanese deco.

We ordered the Kaneda Deluxe Sushi Platter, yukke, soft shelled crab and other individual dishes for the boys (because they eat a lot).

Yukke is a personal favourite of mine. For those of you who don't frequent Japanese food, it's raw beef with raw egg yolk on top. The yukke at Kaneda is alright at best. It's not their best dish but it's not terrible either. I would probably skip it since there are places that have better yukke.

The Kaneda Deluxe platter comes with about 15 slices of sashimi, california rolls, maki rolls (shown in the photo below) as well as nigiri sushi. It's priced at $38 which is about what you'd expect for a platter this size. There isn't much to complain about this - the fish was good, presentation was excellent. The only bad thing is that it comes with only one of each of the nigiri types - which may make it a little difficult to share, but we managed fine. 

Some other things we ordered were sukiyaki (not pictured) and soft shelled crab (pictured above). The boys enjoyed their individual mains so don't hesitate to order their hot dishes!

Service was good - not excellent, but about what you'd expect from an Asian restaurant. Food comes out at a reasonable pace. We left quite satisfied! My share for dinner came to about $22 - including green tea and the Japanese marble drink - so it was pretty okay priced too. They do have lunch specials I believe (from what I've seen of the menu).

If you're in Melbourne, definitely check this place out!

Day 7: 리쌍's Restaurant, Variety of Food

My trip is probably going to consist of food. Nonetheless, it's an adventure trying to find good food, cheap food, bad food, cute food...

Yesterday, classes started officially. I'm in the beginner's class since my language foundation is really weak. I wanted to really consolidate it. I mean, how can you improve upwards when your foundations are weak?

But anyway, since it was raining and snowing (!) yesterday, the 6 of us decided against finding the school cafeteria and instead, taxi-ed it down to our subway station. We went to the nearby department store for lunch. 

The best thing about Korea is how incredibly cheap food is. You don't have to always eat cheap food - as some nice things are a little bit more expensive (but it's still about the same price as lunch in Melbourne). 

This set here was 5,500KRW (about $5.50 AUD). It was extremely filling! I'm trying to make a habit out of eating everything - including the kimchi - because I have a really terrible habit of half eating things when I'm out. Besides, the more I eat at meals, the longer I can wait before eating my next meal. 

Later, I met up with Tony so we could eat 곱창 ( gopchang ) or 막창 ( makchang ). The difference between the two is that gopchang is the small intestines of either pork or beef while makchang is the large intestines. Both equally delicious. 

I'm pretty nonchalant when eating things like this. The guts are fine with me. However, the one thing I can't really eat are feet - chicken feet, pig trotters... 

Anyway, we found 리쌍's ( Leessang ) makchang restaurant. 

The decor is wall graffiti (which I think is quite cool) and the staff were really friendly.

So how do you get there?

The subway station you want is 건대입구역 or Konkuk University Station. It's fairly close by to the station, so just walk toward the bright lights of the restaurants and look out for the Leessang poster.

Day 5: 홍대, 이태원

Today was shopping day. I met up with Tony to start our day. 

Tony really likes these vitamin drinks. So he bought one for me...

Our first stop for the day was 홍대 ( Hongdae ). Hongdae's feel is very indie and urban. Plenty of restaurants and cafes around but most open after around 2pm. There are also many little clothing stores that have clothing for cheap. I believe Haha and Gary's restaurants are around too.

Originally, we wanted to eat at Bar Sak but they weren't open till later. So we found La Lieto for some Italian food (I was craving something with cheese!)

Nom!

After lunch, we decided to do a bit of shopping, but on our way to the part of Hongdae with heaps of shopping, we saw this.

The Hello Kitty Cafe!

The prices are alright for a cafe. To be honest, you really just pay for the novelty. The Green Tea Iced Latte was okay... there was a little too much ice for my liking but most places put too much ice anyway.

The interior is super pink and so cute! It's actually a great place to chill and hang out if you're out with friends. 

If any of you watch Running Man, then you'll know that Song Jihyo wears a very memorable hat in an episode.

Well, the shop is called Hats On!

This is the hat I ended up buying. It's a bit of cute mixed with quirky punk (?).

Finally got myself a pair of Vans :) Navy blue

Our shopping haul... Not all of it was mine, but I did manage to get most of my shopping done. I'm not the type to take it slow on a trip and get my shopping done bits and pieces at a time. I either do all my shopping or none at all.

이태원 ( Itaewon ) was our next stop. Itaewon is known as the foreign town of Seoul. There are many foreign restaurants around. It's popular with a lot of tourist and hence, many of the shop assistants and owners speak a little bit more English than anywhere else.

We decided to eat dinner at the Korean Pancake ( 전 ) restaurant that Kim Jongkook, Lee Gwangsoo and Ji Sukjin went to in Episode 44 of Running Man. 

김치전 ( kimchi pancake ), 감자전 ( potato pancake ), 막걸리 ( rice wine )

We did a little bit more wandering and looking around places. We went back to Myeongdong (again) to buy a few more things since the shops were closed when we went yesterday. We eventually got really hungry since the pancakes didn't really fill us up. 

So we found a BBQ place near the COEX mall. The meat was so spicy! Tony ended up eating most of it (hehe) but I did train my tastebuds a little. Kimchi isn't so spicy to me anymore. 

Icecream to finish the night.

PONY