Hanwoori: Korean BBQ in Burnaby
Hanwoori is a Korean restaurant recommended to me by a Korean friend. Located in Burnaby, it offers Korean BBQ and traditional dishes like soups, rice dishes, and Chinese-Korean options as well.
Interior
The interior of Hanwoori is casual with a lot of wooden furniture and structures. Most seating are booth seating and most tables have a heavy-duty ventilation right above if you are going to order BBQ. With the booth seating, you can have some privacy and there are also some more private booths with walls as well.
Food
I’ve been here on 2 occasions and this is everything we’ve ordered so far.
Korean BBQ – pork belly ($28), marinated beef prime rib ($44), galbisal gui ($40)
We order 3 different meats for our Korean BBQ – the pork belly, marinated beef prime rib, and the galbisal gui, which is rib eye. The pork belly is non-marinated at 300g per serving. The marinated beef prime rib is marinated in an in-house special BBQ sauce at 2 big pieces per serving. The rib eye is seasoned with sesame oil and black pepper at 200g per serving. All the meat dishes come with steamed rice, soup, salad, 2 side dishes.
They have BBQ combos as well for 2-7 people, but we wanted to order premium meats so we just ordered it separately. The price difference is not that much.
I really liked the marinated beef prime rib and rib eye – very tender. The pork belly is pretty average compared to other Korean bbq places.
One weird thing is that they insisted we have some water in the grill itself so that the burner doesn’t get damaged, however, this caused hot water splatters which is kind of dangerous in my opinion. Really strange that they had water in there.
Kanpungi ($32)
Kanpungi is deep-fried boneless chicken in spicy garlic sauce. For the price of $32, I was definitely expecting more food. Each piece of chicken was quite small so if you are looking for big juicy chunks, it’s not the case here, but it is still tasty. I found that it wasn’t very crunchy because of the wet sauce, so it had kind of a soggy texture. The sauce is also a little too spicy for me as it built up over time.
Pork bossam ($39)
I am a big bossam fan so I was happy we ordered this and it was a big serving, although price is a little expensive. Bossam is thinly sliced steamed pork with napa cabbage. You wrap the pork in the napa cabbage and add some radish kimchi and it is delicious!
Spicy tofu soup ($14)
I love spicy tofu soup on a cold day. This one is pretty standard and has soft tofu, baby clams, shrimp, and pork in a spicy broth. It comes with 2 side dishes. The tofu had a nice soft texture and the soup is actually not too spicy that I cannot eat it.
Gomtang ($14)
We tried the gomtang for the first time, which is a slow simmered beef and bone marrow broth with noodles and briskets (also comes with 2 side dishes). It was my first time trying this soup and it tasted much more “clean” and simple than the spicy tofu soup. Honestly, it wasn’t my favourite as I found it kind of had a milky bland taste.
Bibimbap ($14)
I love bibimbap, which is a mixed rice in a hot stone bowl. Inside the hot stone bowl, you have steamed rice topped with marinated assorted vegetables, beef, and a fried egg. You can leave some rice on the sides of the bowl (press it to the bowl!) and have some yummy crispy rice later on.
For $14, the bibimbap is actually quite big and I like to save some for lunch the next day if I don’t finish it.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: โญโญโญ
We had a nice dinner at Hanwoori as a table of 2 and a table of 4. Out of all the dishes we’ve tried so far, I like the bossam and bibimbap the most. Everything else is pretty on par with other Korean BBQ restaurants in the area.
Price-wise, it does seem a little bit pricier, especially for the soups and the fried chicken. BBQ can always be a little expensive and we ordered premium meats so I’m not really going to compare the pricing on those. Also as usual, we over-ordered so we probably spent more than we had to on our meal.
Sincerely, Loewe