ottawa foodies

Went to Kwon's in a fit of hunger the other night, as parking was not available near El Tucan in Vanier, and Culinary Conspiracy was closed. So, I headed off to Kwon's. Tried the chicken stir fry, cooked at the table... very... interesting. It was served with the green onion pancake, a sesame oil dipping sauce, two types of kimchi (both were by far the best kimchi's I've had in Ottawa), some rice, a spicy bean paste (like miso), and some leaf lettuce. The chicken stir fry was basically chicken leg meat, sliced cabbage, sweet potato, glutinous rice sticks/cake/something or rather, and LOTS of stir fry sauce (which contains a LOT of chili, but not overly spicy). Overall, the flavour of everything was awesome, the food was wickedly fresh since it's cooked at the table, the only downfall was the use of leg meat in the stirfry - a higher quality cut would have tasted better, and had a better mouth-feel. The service was great, they constantly checked on our stir fry for us and helped us out, the food service was prompt and they never rushed us at all! The food was very reasonably priced for the quantity, we ended up taking leftovers home. Total bill = $36, including 2 drinks. This was a LOT of food, I see why it's popular with the students of the area. I'll be back to try the pork BBQ or beef BBQ next time with an OB beer!

The newest is Kwon’s Chicken House (Wilbrod). Run by a nice couple whose family in Korean owns a chain of such ‘chicken house’ restaurants. Their specialty is chicken and well, think kimchi chicken and you have it all … They have an extremely limited menu and have this interesting pork BBQ dish which was favored only by the embassy folks … so they stopped serving it!. Even with much pleading and bribing … you know how stoic/inflexible these guys can be, they still refused …. Reason given was that it was raw bacon, then BBQ’ed and was not popular with the non Asian clientele. (I know of many Chinese, European, Indian, etc dishes that especially use the bacon part of the pig because of its taste ….

I've recently become addicted to the "chicken pilaf" on the lunch menu at Kwon's: $6.99 gets you a plate of rice stir-fried with sweet-spicy Korean chili paste and sesame oil, generously laced with moist chunks of chicken thigh meat, bits of nicely cooked cabbage, and as if it didn't taste good enough already, shreds of nori. It comes with excellent kim chi (to my taste--it's light and fresh-tasting, not overly salty or fermented) and a free vegetable pancake appetizer that's practially enough for lunch by itself, if you're alone (pancakes seem to be allotted per table, irrespective of number of diners). They also have their signature chicken dish available in a lunch portion--again, dark meat stir-fried with chili paste, cabbage, rice cake, and sweet potato--which is what my partner usually goes for when I get the pilaf. Yum. It's too bad about the tucked-away, low-traffic location: if they were serving food this good at these prices at, say, TJ Pagoda's location (sigh), they'd be packed every day.