KBQ was a popular Korean fried chicken joint, which shut down a few months ago. Good news is, they're back — with bigger premises and a bit more variety of food, including a few giant dishes of soupy noodles. And black noodles. Basically, a lot of noodles, chicken, and rice.

Service and Ambience

There are a few tables and chairs laid out in the front, but they've also got two private dining rooms. One's just with tables and chairs, but the other is more of a Japanese/ East Asian dine-in experience — a low-slung wooden table on a raised platform, where you have to remove your shoes before entering and then sit cross-legged around it.

The place is super clean, and the staff incredibly friendly. They make suggestions, give helpful tips, and even offers to take pictures for groups of friends and all that. They also have Kpop and music from K-dramas playing throughout. It was pretty much white noise to me, but the people I'd gone with are Kpoppers and they got pretty excited at some of the songs played while we were there. Given their reaction, I'm assuming it's popular and quite good.

The Food

They have about 12 solid items on their menu, but said that they'll be updating it soon, so there'll probably be more stuff soon. Given that this place is popular for its bbq chicken, we ordered a portion of Fire Chicken (Rs. 990), and a bunch of other stuff. 'Other stuff' includes noodles topped with black bean sauce, and more on that soon.

We got the Shimramyeon (Rs. 450) first. This was a huge bowl of soup with super thick noodles which tasted infinitely better than the stuff we regularly get here.

Shin Ramyun is essentially a brand of Korean instant noodles, and that's precisley what this is (and what it tasted like as well). More thicker and heavier than our two-minute noodles, this would be enough for at least two people.

Their Jjamppong (Rs. 1100) was equally large. This is a spicy Chinese-Korean noodle concoction, with a whole lot of seafood, veggies, and mushrooms thrown in. It's red and it can make you cry, so we like it. Personally, I'd have prefered a bit more salt to the dishes, but it was still pretty good. 

As you can see, it's pretty fiery. Another good thing about these food is the lack of oil. Whatever oil there is in the soup is mostly from the meat itself, as far as I could make out. And the Jjamppong is a meal in itself, with an abundant amount of cuttlefish and shrimp swimming in it.

I found their Jajangmyeon (Rs. 700) interesting and really hard to pronounce at the beginning. I've never had this before, and looked at it a bit askance as it arrived to the table.

The black gooey stuff is a sauce made of black beans. It congeals when it's left to cool, so we recommend eating it as soon as it arrives. It tasted quite good, and if I'm to make a local comparision, the paste/ sauce over it tasted practically like kidney beans. The friends I was with are avid Kpop fangirls, and Lee told me that this dish is especially eaten in Korea on April 14, a day when single people get together and mourn being single. It's called Black Day, and they dress in black and eat black coloured food. And go around being sad at their relationship status. I did some reading up on this and it's true. Fascinating.

Last up was the Bibimbap Bullseye Egg with Chicken (Rs. 800), and the Fire Chicken. Wooots!

The Bibimbap was beautifully presented and was soon a gooey mess. It is, after all, 'mixed rice' — white rice under a layer of meat, egg, and a lot of veggies. You take a spoon and then mix them all up together, and your meal is sorted.

We left the best for the last, which we shouldn't have because, fried chicken. It was a bit cold by the time its turn rolled around, but delicious nonetheless. We need more KBQs around because they do a hella better job than KFC can ever imagine. My only complaint would be that it wasn't really all that spicy despite its red-hot appearance, and bordered a bit on the sweet side.

We ordered the half-portion, so there were seven pieces and all of them were very chunky and fleshy. We like it.

Conclusion

With friendly and helpful staff and great food, we're glad KBQ is back. We were the only Sri Lankans there during lunch, and the rest of the customers were all Korean. Looks like they like it too. They haven't gotten any deserts yet, and only have soft drinks and fruit juice so far (the latter which wasn't available on the day we were in), but we their food is seriously filling so you won't have much space for anything else later on anyway.