If you’re a fan of South Korean reality TV shows especially when it comes to food, You’ll be familiar with Baek Jong-Won. He starred in many reality TV shows such as The backpacker chef and The Genius Paik as well as Baek Jon-won's Alley.In South Korea, he’s considered as celebrity top chef who creates a lot of south Korean cooking and making a modern fusion and twist on it. He’s always entertaining and his recipes are worth trying such as Rose Pasta and Rose sauces. Enough about Baek but the other day, on a very random day when I wanted lunch, I browsed around and found a place called Bornga. So, as a fan of his recipes and cooking shows, I was ecstatic to find this place.

Apparently this restaurant has been around quite a while and only the other day I found out about it. The place is located just a little outskirt of the city and quite difficult to access it if you’re not careful following the maps. The place is occupying a building that also has a typical South Korean bar.

Bornga itself is pretty much like the restaurant that you’ll be seeing in K-drama or films. They have the typical mid-to high end BBQ place and also provides VVIP room where you can rent it and have a dinner over there. I don’t know how much it costs but it looks pretty expensive judging by everything else in the place. This place is the only one in this city but in other parts of Indonesia, it has 10 places.

I was surprised that the place was quite empty. There were only a few Korean mixed family eating at the place. Since I was alone, it felt pretty awkward at first. But I was escorted to my table and was handed the menu.

I was stunned! I saw similar style flyer that was I saw over “ The Genius Paik” reality show. The flyer in this restaurant has a how to eat Woo samgyeop. And on the front page of the menu, it has Baek Jong Won’s picture and also the history of how Bornga was born.

From the menu, they specifically mention that the place serves South Korean traditional cuisine with some specialty from Baek’s creation. I didn’t get the chance to take pictures of all the menu but I ended up ordering the lunch set that comes with Samgyeopsal( pork belly) with BBQ sauce and vegetables.

I was once again just bewildered. The lunch set came with various side dishes that makes my table full. I was also given a jug of ocha but I was also ordering rice drinks 아침햇살 which made from different types of rice. It tastes pretty sweet and malty, as well as pretty refreshing.

Here’s how the lunch set looks like

It comes with soup as well and it was something like a kimchi Jjigae. I was wondering if this was meant for two considering that it was really complete with appetizer,main, and dessert. The appetizer was delicious 4 mini bites of Pajeon (Korean styled green onion pancake). There was two types of kimchi as well and various side dishes that I don’t even know the name of. There’s also green thing that I thought was an ice cream but it tasted like sweet potato with condensed milk that was really good.

Naengmyeon

Since I was curious of cold noodles, I was ordering small portion of Bornga Naengmyeon which is basically cold buckhweat noodles. It comes with two slices of meat, crunchy pears, a half portion of boiled egg and savory broth with shaved iced around it and buckwheat noodles. Although it was pretty refreshing but I have to say, the combination isn’t my favorite. It was my first time eating cold noodles and it’s not for me. I just saw this on a lot of K-reality Tv shows and was curious. Now,I am definitely not curious anymore.

After paying the bill, you will be asked about dessert which was a strong iced coffee and some other ones that I couldn’t quite hear. But obviously, I was choosing coffee.The coffee was served on a steel mug and it was extremely cold. I simply didn’t expect that it would be one meal a day kinda thing. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have had breakfast.

I have to say that for the price offered, it was worth it. In fact, if you’re used to eat one meal a day, coming to this place is totally worth it as the portion was generous and it’s not too expensive for the service and the cooking that’s offered. The service and staffs were quite decent. They were pretty attentive and quick to serve. If you’re looking for a nice treat, Bornga isn’t a bad place to be, in fact, after going there, it’s now easy my top 3 restaurants.