First and foremost a dessert cafe, Hanbing focuses on desserts but offer quite a variety of Korean food. I was surprised to see traditional snacks served here mainly Korean dumplings (mandu), rice and seaweed rolls (kimbap), fried chicken and pancake.
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| Amusing decor at the service counter |
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We were glad to see set menus because there were a number of items we wanted to try. In the end, we picked Set E which comprised of a bibimbap, a snack, a snow ice and 2 drinks. After staring at the menu and concluding we may not have enough, we decided to add on a Classic Topokki as well.
The Jujube Tea is actually a red date tea. Herbal and sweet, this was nice and refreshing.
This is probably the smallest and saddest bibimbap I've ever seen. The minced beef seemed to be a plain stir-fry while the vegetables, not individually seasoned. Underwhelming and served in a shallow dish, it occurred to us why bibimbap is usually served in a tall bowl - to prevent food from spilling out while you stir!
We wanted a spicy fried chicken but they only had the soy sauce variation. Instead of coating the chicken in a soy sauce mixture, it was drizzled on, hardly bearing any resemblance to Korean fried chicken. The batter coating had a floury texture as well. This was definitely not worth the top-up for the set! The small sticks of fried toppoki were delicious though.
Also a small portion, the authentic tasting and slightly spicy Classic Toppoki had some ramyun, fishcake and seaweed rolls alongside the toppoki. Everything was cooked well but I can't help gripe about the size.
Fortunately, we picked a Blueberry Cheesecake Snow Ice (also, a top-up on the set) which filled us up quite nicely. The finely grated, melt in your mouth snow ice had a nice milky flavor with laces of blueberry syrup as you dug deeper. The cheesecake cubes were not great but was acceptable with the milky ice-cream on top. Though the bingsu was quite good, we lost interest in the dessert pretty quickly. Perhaps we're too used to rich desserts. This one is actually quite light despite the appearance.
I was looking forward to our visit to Hanbing Korean Dessert to sate my Korean food cravings but it turned out rather disappointing with small portions for big prices. Service was not great either - the wait was a long 25-30 minutes.