March 06, 2014

Korean restaurants are far and few here in Miami

Korean restaurants are far and few here in Miami. So I did a bit of research and I checked out Yukihana, a small Japanese and Korean restaurant out in the area of Doral, right next to Walmart. I am not familiar at all with Korean cuisine, and felt a little intimidated with the menu, so I stuck to chili fried chicken, and bulgogi, a common Korean dish which is simply marinated skirt steak.

The waitress first served me what seemed to be an assortment of pickled side dishes such as kimchi, bean sprouts, jalapenos, and broccoli to accompany the bulgogi. Like I said, I am not too sure about how and what the food is going to be like, but I braced myself and tried the safest thing. The bean sprouts were good; nothing too crazy, but they did have a kick. The same thing with the kimchi; it was like a plain tasting cabbage but with some kind of spicy added to it. The spice was not overwhelming at all.

Both the chili fried chicken and the bulgogi were served with a bowl of white rice; portions were very generous.

Then came the chili fried chicken came, and it had a nice sweet-spicy flavor to it. The chicken was very crispy, and the sauce was a sticky-spicy concoction with bits of crushed dried chili. But I wished there was more of the chili sauce, as I felt the chicken was slightly dry without it.

Next, the bulgogi was pretty good. If you’re wondering, this restaurant does offer cooking Korean bbq at your own table, but in this case, I just wanted the food already cooked for me. They served the bulgogi with onions and sesame seeds. The smokiness of the steak cooked on the hibachi grill was apparent. The portion serving was very decent for it’s price ($14.75).

Lastly, I tried the thai donuts. Yukihana offers it with either chocolate, vanilla, or green tea ice cream, and drizzled with condensed milk and powdered sugar. Yum, indubitably. The thai donuts were my favorite part of the visit to Yukihana.

Overall, the food was not bad, but not amazing.My only complaint was that they have the restaurant listed to close on Saturdays at 11pm, but upon arriving at 9pm, they seemed to pressure us to eat fast so they can close up early.

I would come back for those thai donuts, though.