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Korean delights at Miga

by MATHILDE RABBAT

Strolling down Rachel near Rivard in the past four months, you may have asked yourself, “Why are pictures of Asian dishes gracing the windows of a La Belle Province-type of establishment?” The answer is Miga, whose name loosely translates as “house of delights,” a former diner turned quaint and kooky South Korean eatery. Traces of the resto’s past life as a breakfast joint still remain in the form of corner booths and the long physical layout of the place, but save the sunny-side-up egg on the bibimbap and Migapot, dishes are about as far from flapjacks, sausages and hash browns as you can get.

The resto is of course open for dinner, but you can also have lunch (served between 11:30 a.m.–5 p.m.) in this pastel pink and mint green environment by selecting one of a trio of specials hovering around the $8 mark. Just like objects in rearview mirrors are closer than they appear, the dishes on the picture menu are decidedly larger than they appear live and in person, but portions are satisfying nonetheless, without useless supersizing.

Beef, pork, chicken, tofu and seafood are combined in various permutations to flavour soups, stir-fries and other typical Korean dishes, almost all incorporating the Asian staples of rice and/or noodles. In certain dishes like the bibimbap and jap chae bap (both $7.45), tofu (dubu in Korean) can be substituted for meat.

Allow me to recommend the seaweed salad ($4.25), a delightful, crunchy mix of pale and vibrant shredded fresh seaweed, as well as the darker dry variety, intermingled with shredded carrot and cabbage, along with a ruby red roe topping and a sprinkle of sesame. It’s packed with iodine; not too fishy and quite refreshing. Plus, popping those little roe bubbles between the teeth is always fun.

There’s nothing worse than a fried starter that looks and tastes like an oil sponge. Lucky for us, the Miga tofu ($5.45) entrée manages to avoid the problem altogether. Crispy yet golden cubes means the oil in which they were fried wasn’t overly used. I must admit, I’ve never seen tofu cubes served on a paper doily before, but there’s a first time for everything, right? It’s a shame to have to sully it with sweet maroon soya and peanut sauce, but worth every stain given the zing it lent the tofu. Unlike the seaweed salad, the one that accompanies this appetizer is dressed in a delectable sesame oil and mayo-based dressing, draped over the same finely shredded ingredients listed above.

According to some sources, a Korean meal without kimchi is simply unthinkable, so the kimchi bap seemed like a good idea. It is said that kimchi (fermented spicy vegetables) harbours health benefits that include aiding in proper digestion. Cabbage, radish or cucumber generally make up the most common ingredients in this type of banchan or Korean side dish. Miga’s kimchi bap incorporates a marinated cabbage leaf kimchi, beef, broccoli bits, shredded onion, carrot and more cabbage with short-grained sticky rice. All components are fried together and spiked with gochujang (red pepper paste) to form a very enjoyable spicy kimchi pilaf, as it were.

How can you read jap chae bap on the menu and not order it? In the dish, which incidentally sounds a lot like a Cindy Lauper hit from the ’80s, strips of beef intermingle with a slew of assorted veggies and cellophane noodles. Vinegar seems to play a key role in the marinating of beef strips that participate in both this dish and the kimchi bap. They must have a shredder hidden away in the kitchen, as finely chopped veggies, no thicker than a child’s shoestring, figured in almost every dish sampled. The shredded veggies from the kimchi bap also overlap with the jap chae bap, minus the kimchi and the broccoli, but include some ever so tasty shitake slivers and zucchini shreds. Though the veggie-beef-noodle mixture shares the real estate on its plate with a mound of uneventful sticky white rice, the stir-fry itself certainly doesn’t lack in the flavour department.

Nothing too fancy, just simple, affordable dishes incorporating fresh ingredients. They also do take-out, which is a real bonus.