Na-Re Korean Kitchen — Restaurant in Burnaby

Earlier this year, I noticed a new Korean restaurant on Edmonds Street in the former haunts of iThai so I dropped by for a visit in early January. The interior is a bit spartan in terms of decor but the servers were friendly and helpful.

On my first visit, I wanted to try a couple of things to see how their menu stacked up so I ordered the Seafood Pancake ($17) and Chicken Katsu ($13).

While the seafood pancake didn’t look too crispy, I thought the mix of seafood and green onions turned out pretty good.

The chicken katsu came with banchan, salad, and soup. Again, a fairly respectful rendition with boneless breaded chicken (although it’s not like the Japanese version of curry chicken katsu).

Something that’s probably more well known as Korean-style food is their Half and Half Fried Chicken (I picked their Original and Sweet Soy flavours $24). This actually takes a while to make and it was probably a good 20 minutes before it came out. Suffice it to say, this was a really large bowl of fried chicken. I think I preferred the OG version better as the soy version didn’t seem to be as moist. The soy version kind of reminded me of a deep-fried sweet and sour chicken with glaze over it. But the OG version had tender and juicy meat inside a perfectly crisp outer shell. The dish also came with a dipping salt and pickled daikon.

My next meal here turned out to be an order of Japchae ($17) with beef, mushrooms, peppers, onions, carrots, and green onions. Again, a very big plate so this can be quite filling.

On my last visit here in early March, I noticed their menu appeared slightly different. This time, I tried their Dolsot Bibimbap ($14) served in a hot stone bowl and topped with a fried egg. Usually, I prefer when this comes with a raw egg so you can cook it in the bowl but I feel like the bowl wasn’t super hot and the rice didn’t get overly crispy so perhaps it was better that the egg was fried. In any case, the yolk was nice and runny. It was a fairly good bibimbap and you can ask for more hot sauce to mix with your rice.

Overall, the food here is pretty good and service was friendly. Definitely try their OG...

LONG WAITS FOR FOOD! BUT AMAZING CHICKEN

It took almost an hour for our Korean fried chicken to come out, this is the longest wait for any restaurant and I’ve been to fancy, medium price to even small businesses. I’ve been to a lot of Korean fried chicken places too. They need to have batches ready to fry or multiple frying stations. Whatever they can do because it’s ridiculous. If the restaurant is more packed I could imagine you waiting for 2 hours lol!

My favourite dish here is their mixed fried chicken (soy and spicy) , BUT due to their wait I’ll never come here again unless it gets better. Waiting for food is not ideal for any businesses.

Their tofu soup seafood is bland, but have a lot of ingredients which is on the plus side. They should have more broth , spicier and more flavours. For the price, doesn’t hurt to have a bit more broth instead of a small single bowl. Keep the same amount of ingredients though :)

The spicy black bean noodle dish was delicious.

Overall, wondered why it took an hour for Tofu soup or noodle dish to not come out first. It would have been nice to snack on something while waiting for the fried chicken. We were so hungry that it was getting uncomfortable but also having an empty table close to others (seats are VERY close to others) while the other table was filled with food doesn’t help lol.

Staff was generic. They forgot spoons for our soup, asked to refill the tea “after” we were done our meals. Our tea was empty for a while due to the long waits

Price: great price for fried chicken, they give a large portion. Otherwise price for everything else is a bit costly for...

Food: The food is great! We had a variety, and everyone had different favourites. The soy chicken was juicy and not too sweet or salty. The cheesy chicken had a sharp parmesan taste, so it wasn't my favourite, but my friends really liked it. The good thing is the chicken was nicely fried—not too greasy but retained the juice, so it wasn't dry but it's also crispy. My other friend really liked their beef bulgogi. He devoured the whole plate. The corn cheese was a last-minute addition, and it met our expectations. We were able to get that nice cheese pull. Finally, the beef soondubu was standard. Their kimchi was good too! I wanted more but the server was too busy. There was a customer next to us dining solo, and he got the marinated raw crab combo and the crab stew. It looked amazingly good. I want to give that a try next time.

Service: The restaurant is not very big, so they only have one server going around. When we first arrived around 6:30 pm, we were the only table, but by 7 pm, the restaurant was half full. The server had trouble keeping up with us. She was on the phone and also delivering dishes to tables. We couldn't really get her attention. However, she did come by a couple of times to refill our water. She was nice, but they were under-staffed, so it can be overwhelmingly busy for her.

Environment: It's a cute little restaurant (8-9 tables), probably not good for big parties. It's not super new, but things are...