Restaurant Review: Ye Dang Korean Restaurant

The girls were supposed to meet on a Saturday for Joie’s birthday treat at Ye Dang Korean Restaurant in Ortigas. But since Erlie was busy (as always), Joie and I decided to just spend the Saturday afternoon having our hair pampered at Jesi Mendez Salon. Aubrey then met us for an eyeliner-hunting session which ended up in a non-stop chatting session over dinner. The following day, we were finally complete and got to devour on some Korean goodness!

I have been hearing a lot of great stuff about Ye Dang. Jeff and Joie had the chance to try it out before, and they could not stop raving about it. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when Joie chose this restaurant for her birthday celebration. Erlie, who is late 99% of the time, arrived first that day! (We could not stop teasing her about her newly-unlocked achievement! Haha!) Because of this, she was able to score a table for us before the restaurant got packed.

We were first served with two sets of Korean appetizers (banchan). This is something that I always look forward to when dining in a Korean restaurant. As soon as the appetizers were served, everybody started to dig in. When Joie asked for refills, the waiter told her that they don’t offer unlimited servings of appetizers. We were asked to choose two appetizers, and we were entitled to just ONE refill of both.

Joie told us that they had unlimited servings on their first visit. I was actually quite surprised because it was the first Korean restaurant that I had been to that does not offer unlimited servings of banchan. *insert sad face here*

Everybody seemed to enjoy everything. If there’s something I remember the most about it though is the kimchi. Even if I am an adventurous eater who loves spicy dishes, I could not stand the taste of kimchi. It seems like all my taste buds decided to boycott kimchi. But that changed that day. For some odd reason, my taste buds welcomed the kimchi with open arms!

Joie was in-charge of ordering, getting a little help from our resident K-POP expert, Erlie. Forgive me for not being able to post the price of the food. I was so busy chatting, playing with Skye, and munching non-stop. Hihi!

Skye and Ninang Je

We got pork, chicken and beef for grilling. Everything was great. But if I were to rank it from highest to lowest, it would be chicken, pork and beef. The beef wasn’t that bad. It was very tasty, but also very bony! Puro buto nakain ko, haha!

We also had three kinds of soup. Boyet requested for Galbitang because he loved it when he first tried it at Sariwon. Unfortunately, it wasn’t available that day. So we had kimchi soup, the-one-with-black-beans soup and the-one-with-beef-blood soup.

Erlie suggested we get this - rice cake. It doesn’t look like a cake, does it? Haha! But anyway, this one tasted weird, but in a good way! It tastes like tikoy but with a very spicy sauce. It’s like a perfect marriage of sweetness and spiciness in one dish! I actually could not stop munching it.

And we also got… TORTA! Bwahaha! It was actually a running joke. We kept on thinking for the Filipino counterparts of everything served to our table. We had torta, tikoy, Ma-Ling and batchoy! Haha! But this Seafood and Beef with Green Onions Pancake is one helluva delicious torta!!! It instantly became everybody’s favorite.

I finally understood why Ye Dang is consistently getting a lot of positive reviews from foodies. Food is great, and service is fast and efficient. We were assisted in grilling the meats so we got to focus on chatting and eating. Haha!