Facebook has this function of randomly reminding us of memories we created in the past. And Facebook did just that to an exex-colleague with a photograph we took during a gathering few years back.

With that, he texted for a meet up. Through Facebook, of course. Ha.

We ladies actually meet up pretty regularly; every 2 to 4 months. And because we had Chinese cuisine on our last meet up, we decided to have Korean-Chinese this time round.

And it was of pure coincidence that just a few days before our meet up, the topic in episode 56 of my Korean food show ‘Baek Jong Won’s Top 3 Chef King’ was Korean-Chinese food! So from the episode, I learnt that even for zha jiang mian (or spelt as jjajangmyeon), there are 3 types; regular jjajangmyeon, gan jjajang and uni jjajang.

For the curious, regular jjajang is made by stir-frying various ingredients (including jjajang sauce), boiling it in water, before adding starch to make it thick. Jjajang is then served served by pouring jjajang sauce over the noodles like curry.

‘Gan’ in gan jjajang means dry. Meat and vegetables are stir-fried in oil and sauce without water, which are then served separately from the noodle in a bowl. And it’s interesting that gan jjajang could also be served with a fried egg.

For uni jjajang, all ingredients especially the meat are minced such that there’s no trace of the ingredients. The blended ingredients are then stir-fried.

So with this new knowledge, I was more than ready for our gathering at Hwang Sil. Keke.

Reservation was made 2 weeks in advance. However, as 1 of us ladies could only meet at 2pm, our reservation was made for 2pm. That left us with just 1 hour to eat since their lunch service stops at 3pm.

Upon arrival, we were led to a room. However, the room was really small. One would realise a massage parlour used to occupy the space from the restaurant’s awning. We could see fainted words of ‘body massage’. So I guess Hwang Sil must not have done much renovation after taking over the unit. One could probably imagine how cramped the private room was to fit a dining table and 5 adults in it when the room was originally partitioned to fit just a (massage) bed. Hmm…

And from the menu (pages 1, 2, 3, 4), we ordered:-

1) Gun man du, $13 (above) – Deep fried dumpling.

2) Go chu jab chae (pork), $30 (small) (above) – Stir fried chili peppers and vegetables with steamed bun. We were glad we went with ‘small’ instead of ‘regular’ as recommended by the staff cause the small portion was pretty substantial with us having half bun each. But this was pretty good! Bun was fluffy, which went very well with the savoury strips of pork and vegetables.

3) Tang su yuk, $38 (regular) (above) – Sweet & sour pork. The only dish which we upsized from ‘small’ ($28). And we certainly made a right choice cause we enjoyed this. It was crunchy, yet not dry.

4) Jja jang myeon, $13 (above) – Black soy bean paste noodles. In my rush to have our orders taken, I ordered the regular jjajangmyeon instead of the gan jjajang which they had! Sob. However, I didn’t really like their rendition of the black soy bean paste. It could be richer. And please do not let the staff cut the noodles. Jjajangmyeon are meant to be enjoyed by slurping it up!

5) Jjam bong, $14 (above) – Spicy seafood noodles soup. This was really spicy from the chilli padi used in the broth.

6) Ul myeon, $16 (above) – Seafood chowder noodles. My Korean food show ‘Baek Jong Won’s Top 3 Chef King’ also aired mul jjajang (opposite of gan jjajang) in episode 56. So while Hwang Sil didn’t have mul jjang, we decided to go with what seemed to be the next best alternative. Ha. And this was a familiar taste. In fact, of the 3 noodles we ordered, this was my favourite.

My exex-colleagues and I had a good time catching up over decent food. My favourite was the sweet and sour pork.

Although it would have been great if they were a little flexible with their service hours and granted us just 15 minutes to finish our food. The staff came in twice before 3pm to remind us they were closing at 3pm. So we were somewhat gulping down our food towards the end.

Related posts:

Dinner @ Todamgol Dinner @ Kimchi Korean Dinner @ Hyang Yeon Korean Dinner @ Nanta BBQ Dinner @ Dong Fang Hong