Posted by Matthew Yanko in asian, restaurant review on June 11, 2007 at 9:17 pm

Paldo Gangsan
694 Bloor Street West
416-536-7517
Dinner with all taxes, tip and soju: $72

This Mom and Pop restaurant makes no claims with its décor or fare. One night at dusk I was walking in the neighbourhood and it caught my eye. It looked quaint and honest so I decided to try it. The inside was simple and organized, with closed off booths on one side and tables on the other. I was seated at a table, and given a big jug of water to start.

The interior was simple, with off-white walls adorned with posters promoting Korean beer and liquor. It had a slightly grimy look, as if over the years it had not been well-kept.

The menu, written in both Korean and English was crumpled and hard to read. The English descriptions were bland at best, and it was hard to come up with things I wanted to order, so I decided to go for some old favourites.

I always enjoy the free appetizers at Korean restaurants (who wouldn’t enjoy free food!), and frankly, they were the best tasting part of the meal. The sweet pasta salad, pork and onion appetizer, Japanese-style salad, and seaweed salad were all things that one normally never sees for appetizers. It was a nice change.

The first main dish to come was the bulgogi ($5.99), a sweet beef stir-fry and a staple of Korean cuisine. It was a variation from its traditional form, as it was drier in style and with fennel, of all things, as its main vegetable component. I cannot say I liked it. The beef was sweet from being marinated in honey, soya and onion for a time, but it seemed to float listlessly in the fennel, which when paired with the beef had almost no flavour beyond the familiar fennel crunch.

Then came the Korean seafood pancake ($17.50). This was another classic that had the familiarity of mom’s pancakes I ate as a child, but yet decidedly Korean with stuffed seafood and scallions. This dish looked fairly ugly, but tasted not half bad. The accompanying sauce was uncommonly thick and tasteless, but added the necessary sweetness to the pancake which was okay but slightly undercooked - I prefer mine to be a little on the crispy side.

The last dish to come was kimchi soup ($5.99) with sausage and pork. I was expecting Korean sausage, which is a delightful sausage stuffed with thin noodles and then soaked in blood, however, the sausage was nothing more than your typical supermarket hot dog. That was pretty disappointing. The broth itself was not bad; it was thick and meaty from the pork, and had taken on the sublime complexity that makes kimchi such a great and whole flavour. But the soup was not outstanding, other than the fact that it was bubbling hot when it came out. I have easily had and made better kimchi soups myself.

The single thing I unequivocally liked was the lemon soju ($25.60), which was made with freshly squeezed lemon juice. It was light and refreshing in contrast to the heavy and meaty dishes it accompanied. But for $25, it wasn’t exactly a good value. One would be better off with a pitcher of beer or a bottle of wine.

I don’t think I’ll ever dine here again. The food wasn’t terrible; there were no pretensions about what came. It was similar to what a Korean mom would make, but for its price I could have gone to any number of restaurants that would have offered up a far more satisfying experience. Paldo Gangsan is easily a pass in my book.