I have been on the search for new Korean restaurants! Jong Ga was recommended to me by Cinnamon, so Cocoa, Macaroni, and Cheese and I decided to go there for a late lunch one day. It is situated right in Korea town, inside a small strip mall.
It is a pretty small restaurant and seating can be a bit cramped if you’re sitting in the middle. Luckily, we got a small booth on the side. It wasn’t too busy when we went, and service was friendly and welcoming throughout our visit!
After ordering, our banchan came. Everything tasted pretty decent and fresh with no complaints. We all liked the potato banchan the most. Cheese ended up putting the leftover sauce from the potato banchan into his rice bowl and said it was the best thing ever.
Seafood tofu soup and rice in stone bowl: I was craving something comforting and warm. Korean tofu soup never fails, and this went above and beyond my cravings! The soup bowl was HUGE, I was so uncomfortably stuffed after the meal. There was a generous portion of tofu and assorted seafood in my bowl.
Normally, soup bowls come with a bowl of small rice. Here, you have the option of having a plain steamed rice or rice in a stone pot. The stone pot is very hot so it makes the rice touching the bowl crispy, which is very popular in Asian cooking! Again, the stone pot of rice was HUGE.
Beef soup with noodles and rice in stone bowl: Unfortunately, Macaroni was very disappointed in her dish because it lacked flavour. It tasted just like boiled water with some noodles and beef. After adding a tremendous amount of salt, she said it was tolerable.
But I learned that in Korean cooking, salt is usually not added to the whole broth and people add in their own to taste, so that was probably the reason why.
Oxtail & beef soup with noodles & rice in stone bowl: This soup was drastically different than the disappointing bowl Macaroni had above! There was a lot of depth to this soup, and was simply delicious.
I kept sneaking in little spoonfuls of this because it was so good. I would definitely order this the next time I come here!
Bibimbap: Lastly, Cheese decided to be different and order a rice dish! He really liked his bibimbap and it came with a generous amount of toppings. When he finished his bibimbap and went on to drink the small soup on the side, he said it was very concentrated and tasted like it should have been stirred in the rice.
Clearly we all do not have Korean food enough because none of us knew that. The ‘soup’ was more of a tomato paste, it had a really strong tomato flavour and not much else. We were expecting it to be spicy but it just tasted like concentrated tomato sauce.
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Overall, the portions at Jong Ga are huge and you will walk out stuffed to the brim (if you have an entree to yourself, that is). The service here is really friendly and quick as well. I am definitely going to be coming back and trying more of their dishes!
Thanks for reading,
Carmen
The BVSpa products I received were the sugar salt, salt scrub, body lotion, and body butter! I was quite excited to try these products out because they smelled great, even when I just opened the box! As well, pink is one of my favourite colours so that is always a plus. 😉
The first product I tried was the BVSpa salt scrub, in pomegranate and acai berry. The first thing I noticed was how sweet and fruity it smelled! It reminded me of a fruit candy.
When I first saw the two scrubs, I was pretty intrigued at what the difference would be as they seemed pretty similar as exfoliants. The sugar scrub came in pink grapefruit, which had a pleasant and strong scent to it!
After using the salt scrub, I followed up with the body butter as they both have the same scent. I really liked the body butter as well! The texture was pretty thick, but fluffy if that makes sense? It reminds me of when we make Asian fluffy angel cake at home, and we have to mix the egg white mixture until it’s fluffy. Sorry, I’m not much of a baker so my description is really bad!
Moving on to the final product! The body lotion came in a sturdy, dispensable pump and has the same grapefruit scent as the sugar scrub.
Here is a photo of all four swatches, so you can get an idea of the texture. You can definitely see the difference in thickness between the body butter and the body lotion! As for the scrubs, the sugar scrub was coarser, which you can kind of tell in the photo.
Since this is the sunset cruise, this scheduled cruise only runs once per day, obviously. The other cruises, such as the Landmark or Liberty Cruises, run twice a day.
Once the cruise started to move, people moved inside because it was a windy night and also raining a bit. But on a beautiful, warm day, you will definitely want to be on the balcony!
On the cruise, we also got to see some attractions on the other side of Manhattan. We passed a port where soldiers were deported to Europe in World War 1 & 2 in New Jersey. We also saw the old Colgate factory in New Jersey. These things we wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t for our informative and engaging tour guide!
Passing by New York City, with the Empire State Building in the background!
We scored great seats since we went a hour early! The only annoying thing about our seats was that it was directly facing the stairs to the deck. Since the boat was going pretty fast and it was chilly that day, the cold wind blasted up to us whenever people would open the doors. It got a bit annoying because other customers held the door open for their friends, which made our entire area really cold!
Going under the three bridges that connect Brooklyn and Queens to Manhattan! The tour guide, who was awesome btw, told us an easy way to remember the order of the bridges was BMW – Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg.
The sun was beginning to set at 8 pm! Pictured above is the famous Brooklyn Bridge, one of the first steel cable and oldest bridges in North America. We learned that when it was first built, citizens and government officials alike were hesitant to cross the bridge because it was the first time they used steel cable there.
I actually didn’t know the Harbour Lights cruise went around the Statue of Liberty, so I was pleasantly surprised when it was announced!
On the way back, our side of the boat faced Manhattan so I was able to take nicer city view photos. This is a photo of Lower Manhattan, featuring the World Trade Center building.
Although it looks pretty small on the outside, it is pretty spacious inside. It got pretty busy throughout our visit, and the line never stopped and tables were mostly full.
They also have cute, bear shape macarons with little ears on them in their display! As well, they have cake slices.
The four of us also got a drink each! Starting from top right, going clockwise:
Green tea waffle, $10.99: Cocoa and Lollipop shared this delicious waffle, topped with green tea ice cream, moci, whipped cream, almonds, kiwi, and strawberry. They both LOVED this waffle and said it was absolutely scrumptious.
Banchan, free: To start, we received our complimentary Korean appetizers. Nothing too special here, just your average banchan with no complaints.
Ggorigom tang, $14.95: Slow simmered ox tail and bone marrow broth with brisket. I ordered this because I had this at Jong Ga and it was really delicious, and wanted to see it it matched up. Nope, not even close. The broth had no taste, it felt like I was just drinking cloudy water with a chunk of bone and some green onion flavour. There was also barely any brisket inside, I think I managed to find a couple tiny measly pieces.
Soontofu jigae, $10.95: Continuing on with the disappointment, Cinnamon was shocked when her ‘seafood’ tofu soup arrived with barely any seafood! There were a few pieces of shriveled up seafood, all of which could fit on her small spoon. When she told the staff about this, they brought it back with a couple more pieces of seafood but it was still a very tiny portion. The seafood also did not look fresh at all, judging from how shrunken and shriveled they looked.
Yukgaejang, $10.95: Finely shredded beef stew with mushrooms and vegetables in a spicy beef broth. Although Lollipop shouldn’t be eating spicy food, she couldn’t resist! Again, the protein in her bowl was lacking. She didn’t find it super spicy either, and thought that it would have come with more spice.
Seafood pancake, $21.95: This was probably the only decently delicious order that we had of the night. The seafood pancake was filled with a generous amount of seafood, that looked a lot fresher than what the seafood they put in the tofu soup.