Turning Koreana

On a typical Korean table, food is kept simple and usually, full of heat. Koreana, a restaurant located at Westgate Center in Alabang, specializes in authentic Korean cooking, keeping food fresh, flavorful, and full of spices every time. Here, you get the unique flavors of Korean food that’s lovingly prepared, a delicious whiff of something in the air that you want to take a bite of.

At Koreana, ordering a traditional garbichim set that is good for two to four will get you soup, rice, and plenty of simple side dishes. Like the sweet small dish of peanuts boiled in a sweet sauce and topped with sesame seeds. There is also a cold dish of greens in very spicy chili sauce as well as some kimchi. There are some seaweeds and a hot dish of steamed egg. They’ve got the freshest salads and more. Of course, there’s the house best-seller garbichim, a huge plate of braised short ribs in sweet soy sauce, piled high on a sizzling platter. These ribs are flavorful and tender, falling off the bone with a single bite. The Korean way to eat this is to get a bite-size piece of short rib, place it on a piece of lettuce, spread a good amount of spicy soybean paste stew on top, and roll everything up together. But of course, the Filipino way to enjoy this is to eat your ribs with some spicy paste stew and a steamy bowl of rice.

Koreana offers other meaty sets like the garbi barbecue set of grilled beef rib with a Korean sweet barbecue sauce as well as another garbichim set, this time dong-indong style, featuring braised short beef rib with spicy garlic sauce. On the other hand, the shabu-shabu set is served with noodles, beef, and vegetables. The pork-garbi barbecue set features grilled pork rib with Korean sweet barbecue sauce. The bo-ssam set comes with sliced boiled pork with kimchi while the boo-dae set has Korean-style ham and sausage spicy stew.

Lighter fare includes Koreana’s sashimi set that comes with tempura, hot fish stew, sushi, plain rice, and a medley of side dishes. The fish set has grilled fish, some side dishes, plain rice, and soybean paste stew.

Choose from oodles of noodle dishes, like the ojlng-eo bokeum which includes stir-fried squid and delicate thin noodles tossed together with a spicy sauce. Or try the jobchae, stir-fried noodles with beef and vegetable as well as some hand-kneaded noodles in spicy sauce, chilled buckwheat noodle soup, and hot noodle soup.

After all the flavors and heat, Koreana cools the palate with slices of fresh pineapple to cap your meal.

In this restaurant, everything is indeed simple, which is what makes it so scintillatingly good!

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Koreana is located in Westgate Center, Alabang with telephone number 850-3517 local 216.