COCONUTS HOT SPOT — K-pop fans, meet your new favorite place: Seoul Train, a locomotive-inspired restaurant that serves delightfully tasty Korean meals.
Themed restaurants can get tricky, but concert promoter Happy Go and her husband Vernon managed to make Seoul Train appealing to both lovers of good food and lovers of pop culture.
With splotches of art and color, arcade claw machines, concert posters on the wall and dining booths that resemble train cars, Seoul Train manages to capture the cute-but-hip aesthetic that pervades Asia.
The elements integrate impecabbly well, so the restaurant doesn’t feel like a cheap theme park.
Why trains?
“Well, my husband and I love travelling, but I’m so scared of airplanes. So we always prefer to travel by train. Basically our first date was a train from Beijing to Mongolia,” Happy told Coconuts Manila.
The husband-and-wife team is very hands-on in running the restaurant.
Their efforts give Seoul Train a very personalized touch. The first page of the menu, for example, tells the couple’s love story. It starts with, “I’ve travelled around the world with my best friend for almost a decade now…”
And the food? We’re happy to report that Seoul Train is not just about gimmiks. They have yummy treats, which as Happy explained, were inspired by the preferences of K-pop idols who fly to Manila for performances.
“Because we’re concert promoters, we do K-Pop shows a lot. Everytime I would hire Korean caterers, the Korean idols would complain about the food… because they always want a lot of meat. So in the end I just did it myself. I love eating anyway,” Happy said.
Usual Korean appetizers are offered to welcome diners. Plus, to make the experience even more modern, the restaurant has sleek utensils and a hand towel that will grow before your eyes after putting water on it.
On the menu, they have Korean favorites like kimbap (seaweed rice roll similar to sushi, PHP210), japchae (Korean glass noodles, PHP280 small/PHP490 large) and bibimbap (Korean rice bowl, PHP350)
The meat, as expected, is what really steals the show. The cuts were hand-picked by Happy and Vernon themselves. The yangnyeom galbi (PHP800) with a special sweet marinade is a must-try.
For a nice glass of alcohol, there are suggested wines to pair with the meat dishes. The saeng galbi (PHP980), for example, goes well with a 2012 red wine from a South African winery, Anwilka (PHP250/glass). For those who want to stick to Korean, however, there’s a bottle of sojou for PHP210.
A simple meal for two to three people with a bottle of sojou costs around PHP1,300.
Here’s a nice dinner of woo samgyup (paper-thin beef slices, PHP400), and sampgyeopsal (PHP350) with a variety of dips and sauces. Orders come with vegetable wraps and dips.
My regret? I didn’t get to try the “magic sauce” which was described as something that would change my Korean dining experience. This gives me a reason to go back.
For people who are not in the restaurant business, Happy and Vernon did a wonderful job! Unfortunately (or fortunately), they don’t have plans of expanding soon.
“We made it just enough for us to be able to manage it because we’re not really restauranteurs. So we’re afraid that if we make it bigger, were gonna have to make it more commercial,” Happy said.
Don’t forget to make a reservation when you go!
#28 Sgt Esguerra Ave (near corner Tomas Morato Ave), Bgy South Triangle, Diliman, Quezon City; +63 2 2872446, Daily 5:30pm-11pm.
Coconuts Manila believes in editorial independence. We dined anonymously and paid for this meal.
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