Mr Dakgalbi @ Gurney Plaza, Penang

Mr Dakgalbi, one of the Korean popular joint food restaurant specialised in Korean stir-fried marinated diced chicken in gochujang based sauce has been operating in Gurney Plaza for some time and has gained relatively well responses till today. Led by a Korean and a few local crews, Mr Dakgalbi is a halal restaurant and Muslim community can dine with an ease of mind here. The menu here is relatively small, playing around with different Dakgalbi items. While the staffs are friendly, they appeared to be overwhelmed when the restaurant is about 3/4 full, resulted inefficiency in delivering the service. Meanwhile, the food was average and not well justified by its price tags, though we had prepared the mindset that Korean food was not going to be affordable.

Pairing of Korean chickens and cheese never went wrong in any occasion but it went haywire at Mr Dakgalbi. We ordered a Cheese Ring Set for 2 (RM 76) and it was a beginning of a disaster. The cheese had solidified and heat never able to melt it. Therefore, we felt like eating rubber instead of cheese. Imagine you take some harden cheese patch and stick it on top of the chicken cubes. There was no way to coat the chicken cubes with the cheese, to the extent shoveling the "cheese" from the ring was a difficult task. If you have the thought of "pulling" the cheese, you may ditch it and head to elsewhere to buy some Mozarella cheese instead.

We had a peek at the neighbouring table and the cheese was the same quality as ours.

Fortunately, the flavour of the diced chicken in gochujang sauce, fried rice and fried ramen were alright. As a matter of fact, the Ramen was fried to perfection and we kind of enjoyed the al-dente texture of it. Nevertheless, the Dakgalbi was inferior in terms of quality and variety of ingredients. There were only less than 5 pieces of tteok, a few pieces of vegetables and a decent quantity of chickens. Then there were only 2 types of side dishes - kimchi and some fruits, which we thought is not representative of Korean culture. 

Overall, the experience at Mr Dakgalbi was not up and the taste was monotonous for indulgence. Please note that above experience only apply at Mr Dakgalbi at Gurney Plaza and not representative of the food at other Mr Dakgalbi outlets.