We just had a surge of Korean restaurants popping up on the southside of Edmonton these past months, Pocha Seoul is one of them! Adding to the ever growing Korean restaurants on 34th Ave sits this quaint space serving traditional dishes in a relaxed and casual atmosphere.
Inside you'll find a lightly decorated space with 3 private rooms and an open dining area where you'll find more tables and seating. With K-pop as background music and three different screens also showing different music videos and kdramas, you're in for entertainment.
Let's start by saying how amazing the service was at Pocha. We came on a Sunday evening, not the busiest time, but with 4 other tables along with us. We had 3 different ladies coming to check on us, whether it was refills, adjusting the heat of our grill or stirring the soups. They were all extremely friendly and gave a welcoming vibe making us feel very taken care of.
Dak Bokkeum Tang - ($30) - 4/5 - Braised spicy chicken - This was so good. Perfect amount of spice to leave you feeling slightly numb. The amount of grease that was floating to the sides was alarming but mixed with rice with the juicy pieces of chicken... definition of homey comfort food.
Gamja Tang - M($27) - 2/5 - Pork Bone Soup - Any of my long time review readers will know that Gamjatang is my all time favorite soups ever, so you'd understand my disappointment as I took my first slurp, which started and ended with "oh." As full of color as the broth looked to have, this dish lacked spice and the typical heartiness. Abundant amount of pork pieces were scattered around the hot pot, sadly enough the meat wasn't tender enough either. This dish ultimately fell short of my expectations.
The banchans! We were given the typical bean sprouts, daikon, kimchi and potatoes. First time I got the infamous potato and soy sauce side dish and I absolutely loved it. Kimchi was also really good, a good amount of balance between sour and heat.
Dinner overall at Pocha was good. Portion sizes are huge, one of our dishes could have easily been shared between 4 people. Service was impeccable, they really made it personable. With that being said, the soup wasn't my favorite but the chicken dish was amazing. The menu is also quite extensive, so I won't be crossing Pocha off my list just yet. Will be back to try more! read more