Man Ri Sung Korean Restaurant on Clarke Road, Coquitlam

Updated: 26th February 2011: This restaurant has closed and will re-open in Richmond in early March 2011.

This is an “Oh Wow! Oh My!” kind of post. You really got to pay attention to this one.

Jenny of My Secret Eden went for the Duck Feast at Man Ri Sung and blogged about it. It was one of those rare finds that you only know about by word of mouth. This is the kind of feast that you need a lot of people to attend. So, we invited Angie of Sea Salt With Food and Whitney and Ken. With the kids there were 10 of us altogether.

Man Ri Sung is a Korean Restaurant. They are located on 609 Clarke Road in Coquitlam — which was a long drive away for all of us. If not for this duck feast, we would not have taken the trouble to drive that far. Man Ri Sung is a standalone restaurant with its own parking lot. However, parking is limited and some cars need to be double parked.

Forget about ambiance and decor. It is a really simple restaurant. The dining area is large but was very busy when we were there — that was a good sign.

The above was what we were there for. The duck feast is normally $62 but they had it as a special for $50. Each order is meant for four people but I felt it has more than enough even for five people.

This is quite complicated … let me see if I can explain the Duck Feast. Each order will come with three courses. The main course is the duck. Part of the duck is then used to make either a hotpot or congee as the second course. In the third course, you get to choose from Japchae, steamed gyoza or some dark rice rolls.

It worked out great for the ten of us — we ordered two sets of the Duck Feast.

BTW, you will need to pre-order the Duck Feast as it takes two hours for the chef to prepare it. When I made the reservation, the person on the phone could not understand English and asked if I speak Korean or Mandarin.

Korean eating utensils are different from Chinese and Japanese. Unless you are Asian, you might not notice the difference. For one, Korean has spoons with long handles (kind of good that they even have a paper wrapper around it) — Chinese normally issues soup spoons while Japanese does not have spoons.

As for chopsticks, Chinese uses longer, thicker chopsticks with blunt ends. Japanese uses shorter chopsticks with sharper ends. Now, Koreans uses chopsticks made of metal and has a flat side … we were not used to handling flatter chopsticks. I think the reason why the chopsticks are metal is because it is more suitable for food like Korean BBQ.

The Chef personally cart the duck and carve the duck in front of the diners. I think it’s a nice personal touch but wished that he speaks English. During the time we were there, we counted that they sold about 8 ducks in all. Not bad.

We can see that the ducks were fresh out from the oven … it was steaming when the chef carved it. Actually we were all very hungry because we reminded each other to come hungry. Waiting for him to finish carving was sheer agony for me!

The duck by the looks of it was great … it looked moist. They are very tender to the bite and most important of all, they were quite fleshy.

However, you do not eat it just like that … there are more, much more!

I am guessing what this very important sauces are. I think the lighter one is miso paste while the darker one is some sweet sauce, perhaps hoisin sauce.

There are also the bean curd skins. The texture is not the smooth type (like pancake skin) and this is used as a wrap.

Then there are the scallions, sliced lengthwise which makes it easier to pick up — lots of it is good.

Here is what you do … you dab the sauces onto bean curd skin.

This is what it is all about. Awesome goodness. I bet you can imagine the variety of taste and texture in this little bundle. It is at this point of the meal when everyone stops talking and work on the assembly.

The wings were very, very crispy. It was so crispy that you can even eat it whole, bones and all. Both Ken and I enjoyed this … the rest were not into this.

The Hot Pot were done using the remnants of the duck. It not very spicy but the soup was great after all the duck wrap.

Ken and Whitney loved the noodles in the hot pot. The noodles are like handmade Chinese “pan mein”.

The duck congee was equally good. It is made grainy and brothy with lots of duck pieces in it. The kids love this.

The Japchae is well made but a bit lighter in flavour then we expect. No complains here because after all this is just a supporting cast to the main duck dish.

Actually, the steamed pork gyoza was kind of disappointing. It is very simple, and kind of dry when it was served making them stuck together. It was nothing to shout about.

Like all Korean meals, there were lots of banchan. They served us five kinds of it.

All these for only $105 for the ten of us … making it just over $10 per head. What a deal, right?

I highly recommend this just like how Jenny highly recommended this to us. You should also check out Jenny’s review of Man Ri Sung. I am not sure when the $50 special ends but really, even at $62, it is still worth every dollar of it.

• Coquitlam
• Korean
• Restaurant Review