Bow Bulgogi House

posted on July 31, 2015 (updated on June 22, 2016)

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Calgary has a sizeable Korean population yet you don’t see a lot of Korean restaurants around. As a fan of Korean cuisine, it tortures me to not have authentic Korean food available to me all the time. (Oh, how I miss K-Town in NYC…) That’s how I picked up Korean cooking! Fortunately, there’s an ample of online resources and access to Korean grocery in Calgary 🙂

However, today we’re not going to exchange Korean recipes. Today, I am going to tell you about my visit to Bow Bulgogi House, the Korean restaurant on 17th Ave. Inconspicuously located right across the Westbrook CTrain station, Bow Bulgogi House is a mom-and-pop restaurant, serving Korean and Vietnamese food. It’s a cozy, unpretentious spot that makes its customers feel at home.

We arrived quite late that day, not in time to order the lunch special, which for only $10.95 you get a meal that includes chicken rice soup, BBQ short ribs & chicken, fried veggies, steam rice, and spring roll or dumplings. After some thought, we resorted to other classic Korean dishes on the menu.

The barbecued short beef ribs ($15.95) came with four traditional Korean side dishes including kimchi, bean sprouts, pan-fried tofu and shredded daikon, along with a bowl of steamed rice. Served on a hot sizzling plate, the short ribs were deliciously marinated with special sauce. A mixture of sweet and salty taste exploded in my mouth, bringing out the natural meat flavour.

barbecued short beef ribs

The spicy beef brisket soup ($12.95) was enormous, fully filled with bean sprouts, beef and glass noodles. The soup appeared bloody red, but it wasn’t explosively spicy. (It wouldn’t get your mouth burning. Don’t worry.) It was actually a little bit sweet! The brisket was moderately tender, but not fall-off-the-bone tender. It was nothing like what you would have in Korea, but it was good enough for Calgary-standard.