Hana Korean Kitchen — Restaurant in Cologne

TL;DR Hana's is a very nice restaurant with great serving staff that offer food that exceeds expectations both in quality and what they indicate on their menu. They offer enough diversity for vegetarian, meat and fish dishes, but it still small enough everything can be good. Dessert selection is a bit lacking, so I'd recommend entree+main over main+dessert. Their Kimchi includes seven other vegetables besides the classic and is something that I highly recommend. 5/5 stars.

I went to Hana's on a regular Wednesday's night, it is a relatively small eat-in place and rather popular. Most tables were booked and there was a small line when I left, which is always a good sign for a week day. The staff was so kind to find a table for me regardless, despite me being on my own.

The menu is nice and varied, but still focused on a good core of dishes. There is a good selection of vegetarian, fish and meat dishes, making Hana a good choice for when you are in company with different dietary restrictions. My waitress was very patient, friendly and willing to help me with any questions I had. She seemed like she had a lot of passion for the food that she served, and so was happy to explain what I didn't understand.

My order was the Kimchi-Salat and the Ozinger Bokkeum (roasted squid) with the Korean drink Bong Bong. The drink was sold out, but my waitress volunteered another Korean soft-drink that she recommended instead, that was a honey melon flavoured drink with coconut bits. The dessert selection is very minimal with two Japanese ice creams and moshi, in fact it is the selection also offered by the Asian Restaurant next to my office. Experience has taught me that dessert menu's without specialities are essentially always a sign that those are bought wholesale. But I haven't tried them in this restaurant.

I was happily surprised by the Kimchi, rather than the classic bowl of Chinese Cabbage indicated on the menu, a set of seven different pickled vegetables were served in small, cute plates. It looked so good that it took me a couple of minutes to convince myself this was actually my Kimchi and not some much fancier (and more expensive) entrée. Thankfully, this wasn't just my opinion, since the table next to me took a double take when it arrived and immediately ordered it as well. The dish consisted out of: potatoes, Chinese cabbage, tofu, zucchini, tauge, aubergine and aubergine. The cabbage tasted like you'd expect of good Kimchi, but the potatoes jumped out for me as a clear favourite. They weren't sour at all, but rather really soft and sweet.

The main course was squid with green bell peppers, served in a red sauce with a bowl of white rice. The waitress warned me that it would be spicy, but to me, it tasted more sweet than spicy. It was really fresh, and you could still hear the sauce cooking on the hot plate. The squid was soft and chewy, without going into the territory of becoming plasticy which is always a risk with squid. The sauce paired perfectly with the rice and gave a nice sweet-spicy taste which I could have easily eaten double of. In general, it was just a really nice and flavour dish that I could see myself ordering again.

So in conclusion, Hana's is a great small Korean restaurant in the middle of Koln that I can recommend to anyone. I cannot wait to come back with colleagues to try their specialities, and have already strong-armed some of the other interns to come along. They strike a good balance between being approachable for newcomers to Korean food like me and people more experienced like my Taiwanese desk mate. So a high...

The korean chicken was okay but not spicy at all. The crunch was also quite weak but not too bad. It had a lot of flavor but there was not a lot of sauce.

We got our table really fast, since it is so small, I recommend reserving a seat. Can be done on the same day as well! Very good. The food came really fast and was well prepared and hot. The dishes were flavorful and the food was good quality overall. The chicken was sadly not as good as the other dishes which was annoyingly the only reason why we went there. Other dishes like the soup were very good and fresh.

I can recommend when...

Leider kann man hier technisch keine Rezension mit null Sternen posten, so erklärt sich die Vergabe eines Sterns:

Dies ist meine erste Rezension, aber ich möchte anderen Gästen unsere Erfahrung ersparen. Ich kann rückwirkend kaum glauben, dass es so viele positive Bewertungen gibt. Nur aufgrund dieser positiven Bewertungen habe ich den Laden überhaupt ausgesucht. So sind wir heute mit meiner 6-köpfigen Familie dort zum Abendessen gegangene, um den 11 Geburtstag meiner Tochter zu feiern. Wir haben uns alle wahnsinnig auf das Essen gefreut. Ich hätte schon gewarnt sein sollen, als der Keller auf Nachfrage, ob man eine Portion Nudelsuppe nicht so scharf zubereiten könne, antwortete, dass das nicht ginge, da „die Suppe ohne das Pulver nach gar nichts schmeckt“. Was soll ich sagen… wir haben ernsthaft als Hauptgerichte Instant-Nudel-Suppen bekommen, die im Einkauf maximal 50 Cent kosten. Es war unterirdisch. Auch wenn ich es sah und schmeckte, konnte ich es nicht glauben und habe nachgefragt, ob es wirklich Fertigpäckchen sind. Dies bestätigte die ausgesprochen freundliche Betreiberin umgehend und erklärte mir haarklein, wie sie erst die Päckchen aufschneiden und dann dann die Instantnudeln mit heißem Wasser übergießen. Als ich sagte; dass ich in einem koreanischen Restaurant mit einer frisch gekochte Brühe gerechnet hätte, sagte sie, dass es auch ein Gericht mit hausgemachten Nudeln und Brühe gäbe. Das hätte ich wählen müssen. Auf der Karte befand sich hierzu nirgendwo ein Hinweis. Ich habe so etwas noch nie erlebt. Meine Kinder kochen sich ständig YUMYUM Nudeln zu Hause. Dafür hätten wir nicht essen gehen müssen und wir hätten nicht 10 Euro pro Päckchen-Suppe bezahlt. Wahnsinn. Das war unser erster und unser letzter...