Eating Out @ Dubu Dubu (Korean Fare), IOI City Mall

Stole some hours for a quick dinner with Mom and Sis in November last year. Walked for hours in the enormous IOI City Mall looking at stuff and window shopping.

Worked up a huge appetite in the process and suddenly the usual fare/shops had no appeal no more. So we walked around a bit more and came upon Dubu Dubu (cute name!).

The hostess was this incredibly kawaii little lady who sat us down and patiently showed us the menu and made recommendations of what to order.

The menu had a-a-carte items as usual, but the set meals
were recommended to us by the hostess. Looks like a fair spread too.

Our set meal!

Ultimately the three of us took the good-for-4-persons set meal of Seafood Jigae (seafood in kimchi soup), Beef Bulgogi, Spicy Topokki (say it wrongly and it becomes a popular Malay cuss-word!) and Korean Spicy Wings. We also added an a-la-carte dish of Pa Jeon. Just in case tak cukup lauk. Hahahaha.

The rice was first to arrive, a bowl of densely packed rice speckled with red grain rice (reminiscent of the red rice used to make Nasi Dagang) with portioned kimchi and pickled vegetables.

Then it was the Seafood Jigae, a bubbling cast-iron bowl of seafood in spicy kimchi broth. Spicy kick, with the sharp tang of pickle juices from the Kimchi and the warming seafood broth.

Mom going for the kill!

As soon and we tucked into the rice and soup, the other dishes came in succession. The Beef Bulgogi (always choose the beef option when it comes to meats, it carries such a rich umami flavour when done Korean style) had a soft fried egg on top, complete with gloopy egg yellow (Yeayy!).

Then the Spicy Chicken Wings came and was amazingly crunchy too, despite being coated in the sticky chilli vinegar glaze. Quickly followed by the Pa-Jeon, which is nothing more than the humble egg and flour omelette that had julienned vegetables thrown in. This had a zingy, sour dipping sauce on the side. Something that lifts the overall experience from meh to wow.

Pa-Jeon!

The sharp soy and vinegar dipping sauce. 

Last came the humble dessert. A seemingly unglamorous tau-fu-fah. However, this turned out to be one of the Champion dish of our dinner. The beancurd was so smooth and silky it was like eating wet clouds. The best part, those yellow strips in the bowl was actually candied lemon peel in sweet syrup. Together the plain tofu was elevated to sublime levels due to the interplay of milk, citrus, sweet and faintest of bitter derived from the lemon peel. I had 2 bowls of this. It was SO good.