Who would have thought I would be writing a post about a Korean bbq spot this year? But here’s 2020 and here’s to trying new things again. Hwaro Korean Steak House & Raw Bar is Korean bbq restaurant located at Henderson place across from Coquitlam centre.
Hwaro Korean Steak House & Raw Bar is quite spacious on the inside with pretty good ventilation throughout to prevent the inside from becoming too smokey from the bbq grills.
Grayson and I came in to have the Hwaro korean combo which came with an assortment of starters, bbq items and ice cream for dessert!
Appetizers
To start we got a green salad, a trio of vegetable pancakes, wild mushroom japchae, soybean paste soup, and rice.
The salad was basic with green lettuce, tomatoes and some bell peppers. There was a light garlic dressing on top. The banchan we were given was kimchi, tofu with bonito flakes, and pickled daikon. The kimchi and daikon were on the spicier side which I appreciated.
Japchae
The japchae had soft potato noodles that was on the sweet side. It came with assorted vegetables and sliced egg on top. They also decorated the plate with hot sauce but it wasn’t really needed and it wasn’t ideal for Grayson since he’s not a fan of spicy food. I really enjoyed how flavorful this japchae was.
Korean Pancakes
I wasn’t a fan of these because they had a strange chewy texture. Usually Korean pancakes have a crispiness to it but these lacked that. It was almost as though they were made and then microwaved?
Soybean soup
The soybean soup had lots of onions, a few pieces of zucchini, mushrooms and tofu. I liked eating this with my rice. Is that weird? To eat your soup with your rice so that the rice is all soft and mixed in? Well that’s how I liked to eat it and I regretted eating so much of this because I hardly had any room left for the actual BBQ!
Hwaro BBQ
Not long after we received our appetizers, we were provided with platefuls of meat to cook on the bbq! We had thin sliced AAA marinated beef, marinated pork kalbi, tender sliced pork jowl, and steak cubes. I don’t usually eat red meat so this was quite the culinary adventure for me.
As much as I do enjoy cooking, bbq is not my forte but I was sitting closer to the grill so I ended up doing most of the cooking. I put all the mushrooms and onions on first so they could start cooking. Then a few pieces of each type of meat.
The pork jowl was very tough and neither of us enjoyed it very much. With that being said, the beef and pork were both very well marinaded and packed full of delicious flavour! We were given sauces to eat with the BBQ but we didn’t end up using any of it because everything was already seasoned so well! Slowly but surely, we eventually got through everything on our plates.
Dessert
We were pretty full by the time our ice cream for dessert came but we enjoyed it never the less.
Quick bites:
- The pricing for this combo is $75
- Nice ambiance
- Parking available
