KUALA LUMPUR, Mar 13 — Dear reader: I met someone recently.
I recognise that a restaurant review is hardly the usual medium for this sort of news, but bear with me. I promise it’s relevant.
We have quite a few things in common, and though none immediately jump out at you, we do share a common curiosity and appetite for trying new things.
Where we differ, however, and quite drastically if I say so myself, is in our cravings.
She usually craves clear, restorative soup; I crave calcified, deep-fried blocks of solid meat.
She often craves something green, zesty and refreshing; I crave tubs of salt and fat that come with a post-meal nap, guaranteed.
So in an effort to meet each other halfway — and in truth, for me to start eating cleaner and healthier — we found ourselves in Solaris Mont Kiara, staring down a furiously bubbling pot.
In it were pieces of a whole chicken, bok choy, napa cabbage, potato and enoki mushrooms.
This is dakhanmari, a South Korean chicken hot pot dish that literally translates to “a whole chicken” in Korean.
It originated in Seoul sometime in the 1960s, and today is mostly associated with the area near Dongdaemun, a historic fortress gate that remains a prominent landmark.
No surprise then that the restaurant we’re sitting in is aptly named Dongdaemun Dakhanmari.
Points for keeping things simple, I guess.
Moments earlier, the bird had been presented to us, its skin taut and slightly yellow, floating in the clear broth with segments of large, leek-like spring onions and a potato slice carved into the shape of a heart and morbidly inserted into the chicken.
The server then dismembered it in front of us with a fair bit of ceremony before adding the rest of the vegetables and turning on the stove.
“Please wait for 12 minutes,” he says, before zipping off and returning with a thin reddish dipping sauce.
It smelled vaguely spicy and sour.
Before long, however, garlic is the only thing anyone can smell, and lots of it, too.
Twelve or so minutes pass, and we start spooning out pieces of boiled chicken, vegetables and soup.
The words that immediately spring to mind after the first taste are “sweet”, “clean”, “subtle” and “thank goodness for the dipping sauce”.
Dakhanmari isn’t explicitly marketed as a health food — the table next to us pounded beer after beer, and it took everything in me not to order one — but between its delicate flavour and pale complexion, it’s hard not to think of it that way.
Though there is a small dab of gochujang to spice up the soup to taste, I had already resigned myself to asking for salt.
This later proved unnecessary.
As the pot rages on, the broth reduces, concentrating and intensifying in flavour.
The flesh of the chicken itself is just lean, clean protein; most of its flavour has already been extracted by the broth.
By the time the two of us finish the meat of the whole chicken — no mean feat, as there’s enough here for three at the very least — the broth has gone from subtle and clean to something else entirely, bursting with the sweet, concentrated richness of chicken.
At this juncture, the server brings a basket of fresh kalguksu, Korean knife-cut noodles that cook in a matter of seconds in the broth.
By now, the broth has reduced by more than half, becoming a robust soup to slurp the bouncy noodles in, and I’m really beginning to get on board with this pale, healthy affair.
I would have been happy with kalguksu as a satisfying end to the meal, but there was more.
The server came to collect our pot, at which point the broth had reduced to less than a quarter of its original volume and was almost too savoury, too intense to drink on its own.
He returned with the one health food I grew up hating but later learned to love: porridge, made from the concentrated chicken broth, seaweed and egg.
It was silky and velvety, far more filling than I expected, and deeply comforting.
Of course, I had chosen this.
The other option to end the whole chicken pot (RM98) meal with is rice balls.
But I was so enthralled by the kalguksu that I had completely forgotten this was coming.
And in the process of enjoying this dakhanmari, I had forgotten that this was a “healthy” meal.
I simply found it quite enjoyable, as one might when trying something new: wary and tentative at first, then thoroughly satisfied and content by the end. The company probably helped.
Dongdaemun Dakhanmari
K-G-5, 2, Jalan Solaris,
Mont Kiara, Kuala Lumpur.
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11am-12am
Tel: 012-913 2996
Facebook: Dongdaemun Dakhanmari
Instagram: @dongdaemun.dakhanmari
* This is an independent review where the writer paid for the meal.
* Follow us on Instagram @eatdrinkmm for more food gems.
* Follow Ethan Lau on Instagram @eatenlau for more musings on food and occasionally self-deprecating humour.
