There’s this strange thing about Arleen and me, that whenever we want to go for a dinner we never knew what we want to eat. Having that thick Jakarta Good Food Guide didn’t help either. Tonight, it wasn’t any different from any other day. And then Arleen came up with an idea: Why don’t we just try Chung Gi Wa? She’s been there twice, I’ve never been there, and a lot of people have been mentioning that they have these friggin’ good pork dishes. So okay, Chung Gi Wa it is then.
Today was rather vacant for a Saturday. It was either that today’s a strange Saturday, or everybody’s packed in malls and steered clear of the roads, or I just felt that way because I just went through the insanity of Pondok Labu’s horrendous traffic jam earlier today. Going from my place to the restaurant only takes around 15 minutes. And when we got there, it was sure full as hell.
After a few minutes waiting, and a few levels of Angry Birds in my iPhone, we finally got our seats. Being a first timer here, I let Arleen make the orders. And from all the pork dishes they have, we ordered these:
The first one is apparently the pig’s neck that looks like the first photo when grilled, the second is sweetened pork, and the last is well, a hot Bibimbab. I don’t think that has pork in it.
While waiting, Korean restaurants always amazed me that they require at least 5 different vegetable plates and at least 3 small plates of seasoning ingredients per person on every dinner. Yes, Kimchi was never absent and I was overwhelmed by the number of plates in our table. But that wasn’t the only thing. What amazed me in this restaurant was this:
This ingenious contraption is an air sucker that sucks the smoke out of the grill, and channeled it to God knows where. It’s available on every table with a series of pipes that probably goes to a central exhaust port. This is as steampunk as you can get in this place.
Then the food arrived…
The waiter cooked it for us and mixed the Bibimbab while we figure out which vegetable to pick out from those five plates. After a mere 4 minutes, the pork’s done, and I just struck gold! This has got to be the best pork I’ve ever had to date. It’s juicy, tender, hot, and full of flavor. It’s just insane, now every other menu in restaurants that serve pork seem to taste flat.
I know pork isn’t for everyone, and my stomach can only take that much, but this restaurant serves beef as well. So if you’re curious and can’t eat pork, try their beef. If they could do pork this good, I’m pretty sure they could beef equally good.
So despite the seemingly drunk bunch of Koreans on the next table, this is, so far, the restaurant with the best pork in town.