Lim Ga Ne

Lim Ga Ne (5529 Yonge Street, North York, Ontario)

647-435-2700

Decided to try the 24 hour Korean restaurant with the orange sign. It seemed pretty popular for a Saturday night at about 9 p.m. 

The complimentary side dishes are not uncommon in Korean restaurants, but there were a lot here. And the little fish with nuts plate was new to me. 

Also somewhat different from other Korean joints I frequent was the purple rice. The purple gives it flavour. ;)

It's purple rice in Jo's dolsot bibimbap too!

 I decided to try something new, and got a sausage stew. In addition to the coloured rice, it came topped with a clump of spicy red paste. The stew was served bubbling hot and filled with coriander and green onion bits. The sausage chunks in it are pretty cool as they have glass noodles embedded in them. There were also pieces of mystery meat that I'm not sure I could identify. They were chewy like tendon with an odd crunchy section in the middle. I wasn't particularly a fan of these pieces, but I'm sure my tendon-loving friends wouldn't mind them. 

In the middle of our meal, a waitress comes up to us with this pancake dish. She asks us if we've received it yet, and as we reply that we have not (with puzzled looks on our faces 0_o), she asks us if we want it. We accept, of course, but I'm still not sure why exactly it was served to us.  

It's actually quite nice. It's crispy on the outside, and somewhat chewy on the inside. There are green onions and vegetable slivers in it. The pancake is served with seasoned soy sauce. Overall, it reminds me of Chinese fried white radish cakes, but with a slightly chewier texture. I felt like it had the consistency of a flattened Korean rice cake. Jo and I quite enjoyed it.

Would I return? Yeah. Purple rice! Actually, the rice might have been slightly dry, but I didn't notice when I dunked it into my stew. The staff are VERY efficient and they seem friendly enough. They cleared our table of all the dishes in less than 15 seconds. There's a raised section of the restaurant that's for cushion-on-floor seating with the short tables. The rest is just regular old chairs and tables. The prices seemed a little higher to me than neighbouring restaurants for similar items, but then I realized that tax is included in those prices. On our way out, there was a small queue of people waiting for tables. I'm not sure if it's the food that's appealing or the hours. Or the fact that they have Korean wine and Korean whiskey on the menu.

Exclusive specials are displayed on the walls - only for people who can read Korean.

Total damage: $8 for my stew + tip.