Ju Shin Jung

by Bobby

While I do enjoy kimchi once in a while, I had never been a fan of Korean food. Having tried Jang Shou this extremely expensive and hugely disappointing Korean barbecue restaurant in the Esplanade, you can understand why I was very reluctant to try Ju Shin Jung. Ju Shin Jung is located at East Coast Parkway and it belongs to this chain of asian restaurants which include Long Beach and Waraku that has its own car park so parking was not any trouble at all.

Like Jang Shou, the menu consisted of 2 parts: a selection of barbecue meat and the side dishes that included items such as the usual ginseng chicken soup and kimchi. Beware as the prices stated for the barbecue meat selection is that for one person and at $35, it is pretty expensive. So if you do the math, you’d realise that it is much more worth it to go in a group of 5 rather than as couples or worse, alone.

While similar to Jang Shou in many ways, the food here is delicious and the spread of the side dishes that came with the meat was much bigger than what I remembered having at Jang Shou. We ordered the Wagyu beef, Ginseng Marinated Pork and Chicken, Kimchi Casserole and a Ginseng Chicken soup. The barbecue meat was good, though I can’t really imagine how wrong barbecue meat can go. However the meat, especially the marbled wagyu, was dripping with oil and I did feel a little disgusted after a few pieces.

The Kimchi casserole was good, appetizingly sour and not overwhelmingly spicy, The ginseng chicken soup was quite an interesting dish as the chicken was stuffed with glutinous rice that gave the soup a distinctive taste while possible to taste hints of ginseng. The food is rather salty and the flavorful meal was wrapped up with a bowl of refreshing sweet ginger tea. To enjoy ginger tea, you probably need an acquired taste for it and as expected not everyone at the table found it palatable.

While the food was good, I found the portions small and at that price (around $45 per person), I doubt I would ever return to the restaurant any time soon. But this is definitely a good place to try good Korean barbecue.
Ju Shin Jung 1018 East Coast Parkway #02-01Telephone: 6447-9279