Update 10-Jun-2010: This restaurant had closed and no longer in business.

Ladies and gentlemen.  This restaurant is a great find.

It is unique and one of a kind in Vancouver.  It is cheap.  It is delicious.  It has monstrous portions.  It is multi-course.  It is interactive.  It is fun.  The people are super friendly.

If I tell you the name of this place, you will NEVER find it.  Yeah, go ahead … go Bing or Google or Bingle the name “Bool Chul Pan”.  See if you can find it.  LOL!

It is everything I like in a restaurant.  And I think you will too.

The place is unpretentious.  Not much of a decor.  The tables and chairs are of bulky wooden unpolished type.  The place is smokey.  It is smokey from all the cooking they do for you at your table.  The smell alone of this place will make you drool in anticipation.  The hardest part is eyeing the neighboring tables having the same thing on a sizzling pan … cooking away.

I swear those at the tables who were already eating smirking at us droolers who had not started yet.

Let me clue you in a little bit more.  They serve drinking water in plastic containers like the ones above.  The characters on the label should give you some clue what type of food they serve.

OK, the title of this post already has the word “Korean”.  Just humour me and stay with me … pretend you still don’t know.

This place gives us metal chopsticks.  No other nation in the world uses metal chopsticks.  And the chopsticks are very thin … very hard to hold even for someone who grows up using chopsticks.  It forces you to pick your food more delicately … more deliberately.

They give you banchan.  Lots of it.  Plates stacked high as they bring them to your table.  Then they lay it on the table leaving hardly any space left for anything else.

Suanne had to put her note book on her lap.  I had to also put my camera on my lap.

Kimchee.  Potato.  Bean sprout. Daikon. Cold Sour Soup.  It is free.  No charge at all.  Free is good.

The banchan is quite OK.  Not great.  I had better ones.  But it is forgivable given what we are about to have.

Then they gave each of us an apron.  Everyone has one.  It is bright orange.  This is gonna sizzle.  This is getting exciting.  Felt kind of silly putting this on.  But we did.  Everyone did.

They proudly declared that they are the only people who serves this unique meal in Metro Vancouver.  No one else.  Non.  Nada.  Nien.  Nyet.  Illai.

Mei you!

Then came the gas burner.  For once we see a Korean made one.  It is not one of the billions of Chinese made burners that had flooded the worlds market.

The Korean stands are taller.  They are different.

Nanzaro ordered this.  This one came in a bowl as big as a basin.  Not really, but close.  It is huge, big, humungous, gigantic, enormous, massive.  This alone can feed a family of four, communal style.  Am not kidding.

This is called Spicy Seafood Soup with Korean Pasta.  Only $9.

The noodle was chewy.  It is loaded with stuff … with squid, onions, mushroom, wood ear, cucumber and green onions.

Value for money.  Delicious too.

But wait.  This is not “it”.  The above is not “it” at all.  No siree.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is IT! …

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Updated: 26th February 2011: This restaurant has closed and will re-open in Richmond in early March 2011.

This is an “Oh Wow! Oh My!” kind of post. You really got to pay attention to this one.

Jenny of My Secret Eden went for the Duck Feast at Man Ri Sung and blogged about it. It was one of those rare finds that you only know about by word of mouth. This is the kind of feast that you need a lot of people to attend. So, we invited Angie of Sea Salt With Food and Whitney and Ken. With the kids there were 10 of us altogether.

Man Ri Sung is a Korean Restaurant. They are located on 609 Clarke Road in Coquitlam — which was a long drive away for all of us. If not for this duck feast, we would not have taken the trouble to drive that far. Man Ri Sung is a standalone restaurant with its own parking lot. However, parking is limited and some cars need to be double parked.

Forget about ambiance and decor. It is a really simple restaurant. The dining area is large but was very busy when we were there — that was a good sign.

The above was what we were there for. The duck feast is normally $62 but they had it as a special for $50. Each order is meant for four people but I felt it has more than enough even for five people.

This is quite complicated … let me see if I can explain the Duck Feast. Each order will come with three courses. The main course is the duck. Part of the duck is then used to make either a hotpot or congee as the second course. In the third course, you get to choose from Japchae, steamed gyoza or some dark rice rolls.

It worked out great for the ten of us — we ordered two sets of the Duck Feast.

BTW, you will need to pre-order the Duck Feast as it takes two hours for the chef to prepare it. When I made the reservation, the person on the phone could not understand English and asked if I speak Korean or Mandarin.

Korean eating utensils are different from Chinese and Japanese. Unless you are Asian, you might not notice the difference. For one, Korean has spoons with long handles (kind of good that they even have a paper wrapper around it) — Chinese normally issues soup spoons while Japanese does not have spoons.

As for chopsticks, Chinese uses longer, thicker chopsticks with blunt ends. Japanese uses shorter chopsticks with sharper ends. Now, Koreans uses chopsticks made of metal and has a flat side … we were not used to handling flatter chopsticks. I think the reason why the chopsticks are metal is because it is more suitable for food like Korean BBQ.

The Chef personally cart the duck and carve the duck in front of the diners. I think it’s a nice personal touch but wished that he speaks English. During the time we were there, we counted that they sold about 8 ducks in all. Not bad.

We can see that the ducks were fresh out from the oven … it was steaming when the chef carved it. Actually we were all very hungry because we reminded each other to come hungry. Waiting for him to finish carving was sheer agony for me!

The duck by the looks of it was great … it looked moist. They are very tender to the bite and most important of all, they were quite fleshy.

However, you do not eat it just like that … there are more, much more!

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