Palsaik, Haymarket

It's not everyday that we walk past a restaurant and decide we want to try it just by looking at the menu, but that's exactly how we discovered Palsaik. 

The entrance is a little hidden, being behind Chatime and a couple of other eateries so we wouldn't have ever realised it even existed had we not been wandering around whilst waiting for our order at Taiwan Soul Food. It wasn't until we searched it up when we got home that we realised it was a global Korean restaurant chain, which made us even more keen to try it out!

Being situated right above Taiwan Soul Food, there's a surprisingly strong smell of the sauce from there- especially as we'd arrived just at opening time, before any of the BBQ's had started up.

Palsaik means 8 colours, and refers to their signature set- 8 coloured pork belly, which involves pork belly marinated in 8 different flavours. As much as we wanted to try it, it serves 2-3 so the 4 person beef set seemed a little more suitable to our group.

The set includes an entree of Seafood Pancake, which is one of our favourite Korean dishes. We quite liked their version, which was deliciously crispy, though a little smaller than the one we usually have in our favourite Korean restaurant.

The BBQ for the beef set was on a wire mesh, unlike the Palsaik set, which was on a hot plate. The hotplate did look quite high maintenance as the waiters constantly had to remove the burnt bits.

The set includes 4 different types of beef, 3 of which are Wagyu- the cuts of meat are beautifully marbled and are deliciously moist and tender.

Unlike the pork set, the beef one doesn't come with names so we're not too sure which is which, but we quite like this one, which we find the most tender of them all, and is marinated slightly to give it enough flavour without masking the meaty taste of the wagyu.

Marinated Flank Skirt

We're a huge fan of marinated meats so this one was definitely our favourite as it was the only one in a strong sauce. It's marinated in their special sweet soy sauce, kind of like bulgogi, and the serving size is larger than it seems, perhaps because they cut the meats into small pieces.

Kimchi Hot Pot

And because BBQ alone isn't quite warm enough for the cold weather we're having now, the hot pot is the perfect accompaniment. There's plenty of variety in there- with pork belly, mushrooms, tofu, rice cake and noodles.

Overall, it was pretty good value for $88- though we were a little disappointed they didn't honour their Facebook offer of free soft drink for liking them on FB!