Dad's Family Restaurant ... Serves Korean?

Like opening up a present on Christmas, finding new restaurants in Urbanspoon/Zomato brings an immense amount of delight and enthusiasm. Even more so when I had clearly overlooked a specific spot or a type of cuisine, as I had today with Dad's Family Restaurant & Catering, a Korean (?) restaurant located in St. Vital that had escaped my initial perusal of offerings in Winnipeg.

Dad's Family Restaurant & Catering is located in St. Vital in a small neighborhood stripmall. It is the perfect example of a great spot that can be initially missed, as the exterior looks plain and tells the customer nothing about the type of food or cuisine of the restaurant. In fact, the rather dated look on the outside made me double check and make sure I had the right place in mind. With that in order, I made my way inside to the similarly dated restaurant. You see, Dad's Family Restaurant resembles a retrofitted fast food joint with a large frying griddle and cheap pavilion style seating. Nevertheless, the restaurant was packed with ethnically Korean customers dining on soups and noodles a plenty.

The menu is a complete dichotomy of two cuisines. On one hand, Dad's serves breakfast and brunch diner specials including omelettes, pancakes, burgers and hot dogs; all very average sounding with little nuance. While on the other hand, at the back of the menu, one finds their Korean specialties including special black bean sauce with noodle, Korean fried chicken and Korean dumplings. Truthfully, the majority (if not all) the diners there were partaking on the Korean specialties, making it seem like their predominant meal ticket to success.

Chinese Bean Sauce with Noodle, as per its namesake is a Chinese dish adapted to the Korean palate. Thick wheat noodles are cooked to perfection and topped with a fried black bean mixture comprising of cubes of pork, onions and peas. The rich sauce is the key here with a hint of bitterness from the black bean, saltiness and subtle sweetness that all work together to create a taste of umami. Within each taste, diners also get a nugget of pork that adds a fatty and proteinaceous component to the dish.

The Spicy Seafood Soup with Noodle compromises a steaming hot bowl of soup with the same thick wheat noodles but topped with a mixture of seafood and vegetables in a spicy and rich broth. Overall the broth was excellent with deep rich flavours and a nice spice component. I was disappointed however with the size and amount of seafood, which all amounted to a few pieces of tiny shrimp, mussels and squid that resembled those found in the frozen aisle of the local grocer.

Seafood Onion Pancake is a traditionally Korean dish taking the same bits of seafood and frying it crisp into a thin pancake. While the cake was fried nicely and had a nice thin crispy crust, the ingredients inside lacked flavour and also consisted of the same tiny amounts of small and bland (from frozen) seafood. Ultimately the dish was missing a sauce or a dip, an usual accompaniment at other restaurants, to enhance and compliment the flavours present.

Instead of serving Banchans, Dad's Restaurant offers small slivers of Pickled Daikon. Featuring a nice wine-y flavour, the daikon were a nice crisp textural contrast to the rich and deep soups. I could not help but miss the usual banchan offerings though, something that has become standard at most Korean restaurants.

Dad's Family Restaurant is truly an enigma in the restaurant scene: a retrofitted fastfood joint taken on by a Korean family who strives to serve both breakfast/brunch favourites AND their native Korean specialties. While there are much better Korean restaurants in Winnipeg, one cannot beat the combination of well priced and reasonably large meals, even if the overall taste is average.