We visited another Korean restaurant in Fort Lee. This time, it is a real deal Korean from their name, interior and customer base. I heard they are pretty authentic but their menu had both Korean and English, I thought we would be able to navigate the menu without issue.

The inside was simple and no-frill, just basic furniture and not much decoration. When we walked in, a manager or owner (?) greeted us with a quick smile and pointed to one of the empty table. He said something in Korean, which I didn’t understand but he was friendly and was working the floor really fast. We got there right before the lunch hour rush, it got filled up quickly with Korean customers.

 

We were there until after the lunch rush ended,so I got to see the interior a bit better. They had some photos of the dishes they offer. I really do like menu with photos, especially the ones I don’t know what they are exactly by reading the name of the dish. Sometimes, description is not enough to know exactly what they would look like. They had a photo for every item they offer, which was great.

They brought some complimentary side dishes, all looking bright red. This is when I really started to believe their food is going to be authentic. They love their food spicy! I feel like some Korean restaurant that has many non-Korean customers would tone down the spiciness for them. Here, it was all red – firing hot red. They were good, but really spicy! As spicy as they look…

For our lunch, we ordered Dol Pan Bi Bim Bab ($12.99) and Bul Go Gi ($17.99). The price point was a bit higher than I thought, but then the portion size was huge!

Dol Pan Bi Bim Bab comes with vegetable and meat on top of rice in hot stone pot. The stone pot is so much bigger and wider than the normal Bibimbab that I am used to, so this was a surprise. The one item that I usually get with Bibimbab was an egg, but this one didn’t come with sunny side egg. There was no option to choose how you want the egg on the menu, but I wonder if they will accommodate it if a customer asked for it? Instead of sunny side egg, they had shredded egg crepe on it. I like mixing everything with runny egg, so I was a bit disappointed…

Even thought the stone pot is really wide, but it was pretty shallow. So, without much depth to it, it was not as big of a portion as I thought. It had a good amount of veggies like carrots and bean sprouts, and it also had lots of mushroom as and dried seaweed.

 

Here is the photo of the stone pot with my hand on the side. I don’t think the photo does any justice to its size… But I think you get the idea. I mixed it up on the big surface, added some spicy sauce, and it was ready to go! It was very comforting, fresh, and tasty. I still would like to have the sunny side egg though… The rice was fluffy, veggies were crunchy, shredded egg was soft and the dried seaweed added a nice flavor.

 

The Bul Go Gi is a grilled sliced tenderloin beef, and it came in a piping hot skillet. I like it when food arrives to the table still sizzling… It certainly gets your appetite going!

The size of the skillet was smaller than the stone pot, but the beef was piled high! The meat was tender and had good flavor from the marinade. This is not a spicy dish, but pure comfort dish. The scallions and onions added nice crunchy texture, and also a good amount of garlic mixed in there to boost flavor.

It came with a side of white rice. It is so good to put some of the beef on a top of a steamed hot rice, and give my taste buds something to cheer about. I assume you could get refill on the rice, but since that was so much food, we were too full to do that.

They also brought this soup, which I am not sure if it came with the Bi Bim Bab or the Bul Go Gi? It was kind of flavor-less, but helped control the spicy-ness of some of the food we were eating.

We couldn’t finish all the food, so we took some home. So, for the portion we received, I think the price is worth it and more. The staffs took care of us well, and we had a nice brunch. They had so many other tasty looking items on the menu, I would like to try some more in a near future!

 

Sa Rit Gol – 166 Main St, Fort Lee, NJ 07024