MA CHEF KOREAN RESTAURANT WORTH A VISIT
It’s always a reassuring sign to discover a restaurant keeps a small menu of items, and it’s an even better sign when an eatery’s chef/owner periodically leaves the kitchen to chat with guests and ensure everything is running as it should.
Both mean there’s a strict attention to detail, a deep respect for the food being prepared and the diners to whom it’s being offered.
That’s the experience you can expect at Ma Chef Korean restaurant, which opened a few months back at Lendrum Shopping Centre. My husband and I ducked in for a warm meal on a cold night a few weeks back, both of us fans of Korean cuisine and always hunting for a new destination in the city.
We arrived toward the end of the dinner rush, about six tables occupied in the modest but immaculate space. Our host quickly showed us to a comfortable corner table and offered us a menu and some water. As I said, the menu is tightly constructed, just a handful of appetizers and mains on offer, which allows chef/owner Jung Ho Lee to experiment with nightly specials — a dish of crispy gochujang-drenched pork ribs and a fried tilapia were on offer during our visit.
Wanting to try a few of the menu mainstays, we started with the steamed tofu ($5) and the avocado and shrimp salad ($12). We complemented our meal with a bottle of Makkoli to share ($12), a Korean fermented rice wine that has a mild sweet flavour and cloudy complexion, traditionally sipped out of wide, shallow bowls. It’s one of my favourite Korean beverages but sometimes hard to find here, so I was happy to see it on the drink menu, which also includes a few beers, a half-dozen varieties of soju, and a small selection of pop and juice.
It wasn’t long before the dishes started arriving. First the salad — the creamy avocado and plump shrimp were carefully wrapped around each other atop a bed of lightly dressed field greens. On top sits a small mountain of thinly shredded deep fried potato, which offers a satisfying crunch to the dish. Curious about this topping, I asked the server for more details, which quickly resulted in a visit to our table by chef Lee. He explained the kitchen shreds the potatoes then washes them to remove excess starch before drying them carefully, which prevents the heat-sensitive veg from burning inadvertently. This then makes the dish all the more impressive and is a testament to the discipline of the kitchen.
Lee has been cooking for nearly 30 years in impressive kitchens around the world and clearly takes pride in his craft. Ma Chef is his labour of love, a space he opened to no fanfare, preferring to let the food speak for itself — and does it ever.
The steamed tofu was similarly simple yet delicious and exquisitely executed. It would have been easy enough to slop a pile of housemade kimchi atop the thick slices of tofu, but instead Lee has taken the time to build a balanced dish both in flavour and texture. A small bed of shredded cabbage gives the dish some crispy freshness while a handful of greens brightens it up. The spicy gochujang sauce is tempered by a healthy amount of sesame oil and smattering of black and white sesame seeds atop the tofu. No flavour overpowered any other, and you’re left with a slight yet satisfying heat dancing at the back of your mouth.
Next we decided to tackle the Rocky Mountain Bulgogi ($37), which certainly lives up to its name. A literal mountain of 48-hour-marinated thinly sliced raw beef sits cratered between a fragrant broth and piles of fresh carrots, zucchini, mushrooms and tofu. Underneath it all, a pile of japchae, or glass noodles, sit ready to soak up all the flavours. Lee once again made an appearance, gingerly placing the wide pot atop a portable grill so the meal can be cooked tableside. It isn’t long after the grill is lit that the broth begins to bubble and the meat begins to slowly curl, beckoning us with its rich aroma. We dished the stew into small bowls, using the steamed rice on the side to sop up the broth. While it’s meant to be shared between two or three people you can easily stretch to a fourth if you’re noshing on appetizers too.
As is customary with Korean cuisine, we were provided a few small complimentary side dishes, or banchan, to accompany our meal. Both were house-made kimchi, one the cabbage variety and the other a crunchy radish. It’s the details like these that made our meal that much more satisfying.
We have visited Ma Chef again since that first visit, each time welcomed back like old friends. On our most recent visit we witnessed Lee showing the uninitiated how to properly mix a big bowl of bibimbap and using scissors to roughly cut pieces of radish kimchi tableside (because cutting it after it’s been fermented keeps it crispy, of course). I get the sense every diner is given this care and attention, making Ma Chef a must-visit spot for authentic, fresh Korean cuisine.