A while back, cut off from our favorite Korean place by a staff holiday, we tried out an Emergency Holographic Korean Restaurant, and deemed it good, but not as good as our favorite. Yesterday, on our date night, we discovered what the First Reader deemed the Emergency Holographic, Emergency Holographic Korean Restaurant. Cumbersome, but it works. We now have a backup to the north, and a backup to the south. We’re covered…
We were in Mason, Ohio, looking for a place to eat, headed toward a place we knew was good if we failed to find a non-chain eatery along the way, when I spotted a sign for Korean food. Being the driver has the perk of being able to respond instantly to the tummy saying ‘ook! Pick that one!’ which is also how we discovered Chateaux Beirut… but that’s an old story.
Located in a small strip mall, SuRa Korean Cuisine is unassuming on the outside, and pleasant on the inside, with a back section where you go up a couple of stairs to your table – and there are roll-down bamboo shades you could presumably use for privacy. I’m not really sure about those. But we didn’t care about the ambiance, when we walked in the door we both took a deep sniff, looked at one another, and knew this would be good. Sitting and looking at the menu backed that initial impression up. We wound up ordering our favorites, because that way we’d have a benchmark for comparison.
The First Reader’s comment on the bulgogi is that it wasn’t as flavorful as Yung’s makes it, but it was not bad. It had more veggies mixed in than Yungs, and he wasn’t offered a spicy scale (although we did have the obligatory bottle of Sriracha on the table to add heat). The rice was good, on par with Yungs, and to my amusement they mix in a tiny bit of forbidden rice to make their rice purple, a gimmick but a cute one. The miso soup that came with both our entrees was watery, neither of us finished it.
The side dishes were brought to us separately, rather than combined as Yung’s does. The seaweed we usually like had been made into coleslaw, which was… blink worthy. But the kimchee was tasty, and I really liked their pickled daikon. My bibimbap was good, not burnt on the bottom, and once I added sauces for flavor, I dug in to the purple rice and beef and veggies happily.
All in all, we left agreeing that while Yung’s is still the gold-star standard, we’ll be back to SuRa, and probably bring the kids along. They have KimBob (sushi, the name made me giggle) and mochi flavored ice creams. I can recommend this place to people who live in Cincinnati and don’t want to travel all the way up to Fairborn just for a meal (although Yung’s is worth it). It was a nice place for our date night, and I’m happy to be back to exploring for restaurants that aren’t stamped out of a mold.
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4 responses to “The EHEH Korean Restaurant”
Thanks for posting this. I may have to give that place a try. I’ve been looking to try some new-to-me restaurants.
I’m surprised you found a non-chain place along Mason-Montgomery Road. It seems like every restaurant there is part of either a long-established chain, or a relatively new (at least to the area) one. One small strip mall a few blocks south of your Korean place has 6 of 8 spots filled with chain restaurants of fast food or fast-casual variety.
We were surprised, too. We were headed for the Mason Grille, having given up on finding one, when I saw this place. In the same strip mall is a Chinese place that looks good and we’ll try out in a few weeks.
First Reader still looks odd to me without the face foliage. But at least twenty years younger. Makes me think I should have grown mine out, just to have that kind of transformation now…
I had been waiting for him to grow it back, and to my delight he started on it this last weekend. He should be back to himself in a couple of weeks.