Hanmaru — Restaurant in Laurieton

Sigh. My faithful crew of eaters and I are quite experienced with Japanese and Korean dishes. I personally eat Japanese more than twice a week, and we regularly have Korean for birthday meals. So, we have some expectations when it comes to these heritage and fusion dishes. On this occasion we had checked into our hotel and walked into town for a dinner feed. Without a reservation we were eventually welcomed across to a table, slow attention even though the place was empty, on a Saturday night. The Katsu Chicken piece was well cooked on one side, and the crumbs on the otherside were undercooked and soggy. The sauce on the side was unexpected and without flavour. This dish was not fully eaten. Pork & Chives Dumplings -Deep fried. Well cooked great crispness, good chives taste. Maybe a little unbalanced but that's almost a preference thing. Sweet and Spicy fried chicken, this is usually a fan favourite. Sadly, this interpretation was not spicy but did have hints of sweetness. The half serve we received had slightly undercooked and well overcooked pieces. Spicy Sizzling chicken, was neither Spicy nor Sizzling. Very watered down flavour. This was the only dish completely eaten. Udon beef, warm and Sizzling as it arrived good noodles but the beef was bland and limp. Perhaps we arrived at the end of their shopping cycle, but, it's hard to determine how the kitchen delivered this. Perhaps poor timing or some cross contamination. One of the bowls of rice actually contained several raw grains of rice. I am not sure how that could even happen. Even as i type this all 3 of us are...

Went for dinner mid week and even tho we arrived for dinner early at 5.45pm and ordered quickly, it still took over 40 minutes for the first dish to arrive. The kids were starving and bored after 30 minutes of waiting so it was lucky I had some biscuits for them to snack on while we waited for the 1st dish to arrive. The main dishes took another 10 minutes. They weren't even hard dishes to make. The takeaway people seem to get their meals faster than the dine in customers. When the food arrived, it was disappointing. The half serve of fried Korean chicken was overly deep fried and was more like Japanese chicken karage, instead of the so called Korean fried chicken. The plain udon had no umami flavour at all, just tasted salty. The bulgogi beef was very dry, the meat didn’t even look like it had any moisture or sauce on it, it looked like it had been cooked and sat around for awhile so that all the moisture had evaporated from it before we received it. The miso soup was overly salty. The 'spicy' soft tofu stew had a lovely flavour but had no spiciness to it at all. The rice was hard and grainy so felt like you would get indigestion after eating it if you didn’t chew it for a long time. Overall, food was edible but wouldn’t go back there again if you want decent Korean or jap food, disappointing...

So we tried out the new Korean restaurant tonight. This is the next instalment in Laurieton’s changing food landscape. Hopefully it continues and the street becomes a real haven for foodies to travel to from afar. I wanted to take photos of the food but we ate it before I could snap any shots. They were busy and it was their second night open. The tables were full and the take aways were out the door. I had to wait an extra 40 mins after the time I was told it would be ready. That’s ok I think they will get better. The waitress ‘Audrey’ was great. I heard one table try to work out how they could give her a big tip. Overall the food was great. We had the fried chicken the chicken avocado role and something beginning with b. It was good. Cut them some slack while they get the hang of it....