Haan Korean BBQ

For all of the Korean restaurants located in the GVRD, there is a surprising lack of good options for Korean BBQ.  Yes, I'm sure we can name quite a few, but compared to places like L.A. and NYC, there aren't many great ones to be found.  Of course it could be partly due to the smaller Korean population, but it isn't as if Korean food is a mystery here.  In fact, I find it quite popular and somewhat of an "it" thing for the past little while.  So when we wanted to do Korean BBQ, but didn't want to head to the usual spots (including the now not-as-good Insadong), we made our way out to Haan Korean BBQ in Coquitlam.

We ended up getting 2 Short Plates and 1 Beef Rib. For the amount of meat that we got, I thought the pricing was fair.  The meat quality was actually quite good with plenty of marbling.  Since it was sliced thin, the beef cooked rather quickly, but it wasn't as tender as it we had hoped for.  Ont the other hand, the beef short rib was buttery tender and since it took longer to cook, developed a smokier char.  Served with our meals was the usual condiments of romaine lettuce and Banchan.  Of those, we found pickled daikon, potato salad, bean sprouts, spicy pickled turnip and kimichi.  Nothing particularly amiss about these as the kimchi was spicy and full-of-depth.  I would've liked to see stewed potato though.

Not to be outdone, we also added the Gamjatang Hot Pot served on its own burner.  This was quite good as it was loaded with meaty and tender pork bones.  The broth itself had a good spice with legit perilla seeds.  Hence there was good aromatics and depth as well.  Hidden within, there was also some veg and tender nuggets of potato.  To top it all off (if we didn't have enough food already), we added the Bossam.  This was also well-executed with buttery and meaty slices of pork belly complete with spicy radish and a curiously small amount of cabbage.  Overall, we found the food at Haan to be quite good and fairly priced.  Of course Korean BBQ is never a cheap proposition, but this was okay comparatively.

The Good:
- Fairly good eats
- Fair pricing
- Service was decent for us

The Bad:
- The regular beef was not as tender as it appeared