Sura Korean Restaurant - Temescal - Oakland

let's just assume that we've all had more than enough turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn and cranberry sauce to last us the entire year so I won't need to recap all of that shall we? now...on to the more interesting stuff.

So recent chowhound postings alerted me to a relatively new Korean restaurant in the Temescal area of Oakland. The name of the restaurant is Sura @ 4869 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA 94609. In a newly renovated space it is very spacious in side, with fully built in table grills and ventilation systems that all full service Korean restaurants should have for BBQ. Though we didn't go for the table grilling this time, I'm looking forward to testing out the nicely designed tables on my next trip. My foodie partner in crime agreed to try out this new place sight unseen at the time. Glad to have another adventurer with me, we perused a very extensive menu fully of bbq dishes, noodle dishes, stews, tofu soups appetizers and much more. Definitely a place you'll want to go to again and again to try all the items.

okay, now onto the food. After much deliberation we ordered the pan fried dumplings to start us off, a spice beef and mushroom soon du bu soup(tofu soup) and a big bbq beef dol sot in a hot clay pot. With our meal of course, came the myriad banchan dishes. Probably more than I've ever seen at a Korean restuarant. There must've been at least 17 of them. Some we're hits, some were misses. In general they were good, though a few I felt could have been stronger or spicier. The dumplings we agreed were excellent. Our starting appetizer came with 10 I believe. crispy bottoms, flavorful middles. And just went great with their spicy, soy dipping sauce. We both really wanted to get the tofu soup since it was getting pretty cold that night and it hit the spot for me. Spicy, but not too spicy, it was packed with tofu, meat, veggies and mushrooms. Very savory and served really well over rice. If that was the only thing we had that night, I would've been happy, wells, perhaps if we had two servings, it was that good.

Our last dish, with the bbq beef is like a bib bim bap in a heated clay bowl. one of my favorite korean dishes cause it just makes the rice on the bottom crisp and crunchy from the heated bowl. If you've never had it, it's basically a bowl of rice, topped with several varieties of julienned veggies (pickled bean sprouts, carrots, cucumbers etc.) with some sort of meat (in this case, thick slices of marinated grilled beef) and a spicy sauce to mix it all up. At some other restaurants they serve it with a raw egg cracked on top that you cook when you mix it up in the hot clay bowl. This would be the main thing missing for me in the version they serve at Sura. An egg or two really does make this dish better. Even lacking the egg, it's quite good and I also added some of the tofu soup over several servings to mix some of the flavors. Very comforting I have to say.

All in all, a very satifying meal that didn't break the bank. I think all together, for two people the bill came out to be $35 after tax and tip.