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| - Will update rating, s'il y a lieu, after I try items from their regular menu.
First off, I want to be clear that Bozan is not a korean name, and I'm not an expert in Korean cuisine, but I know how to BBQ.
Assuming I have the basic logistics to cook meat properly, this review will focus on Chez Hwang's AYCE korean BBQ from a pitmaster's perspective.
The choices of meat were relatively limited: pork belly, beef brisket, and marinated beef; that's right, no bird, no fish, only red meat.
Although the meats looked bright red and vibrant (fresh), I had hoped to see some korean seasoning... but no, there were no sight of rub or marinade on the pork belly and the beef brisket, which is rather disappointing since I came for korean BBQ and not grilled meat on a metal plate.
And must I add, unseasoned meat simply doesn't taste that great while adding sauces to non-marinated meat simply doesn't scale on flavor (yeh, I couldn't save the meats even with their house teriyaki and hot sauce *sigh*).
Grilling bacon alongside thin slices of beef brisket was a pain. The fat would sear on the edges and curl instead of rendering because the heat is too high, while the beef brisket needed that quick sear (30s per side). I figured that the center of the plate was hotter, but the ambient temperature was too low for fat to render. So we cut out the fat from the pork belly and only grilled the muscles as that extra fat wasn't doing any good to flavor, texture, or health.
As for the marinated beef, it contained a lot of indistinguishable fat (due to the dark marinade) that resulted in very chewy mouthfuls (not my type of texture, I'd get gummy bears if I wanted to eat rubber). The flavors were great for the first few bites, but after a couple slices, my palate got real tired -- sweet, garlicky, but no impact.
The 'grill' was propane/butane based, but it heats up a metal plate and no flame could be seen -- so much for BBQ, cooking over open fire -- so it doesn't result in any charcoal/carbon flavor (pretty lame) unless the meat is burnt (lamer).
Objectively, the AYCE korean BBQ at Chez Hwang is underwhelming, comparable to chinese owned Seoul Chako and Tianxia, but I'll give them credit for their side dishes (not my area of expertise, but tasted legit).
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