Oiso, The Sphere, Bangsar South

Thank God it’s Friday so we can have an extra special lunch to review for you! S, N, Master Yoda and our newest team member, Baja Hitam, agreed for something a bit different than our usual fare and decided on embarking the journey to Bangsar South. It is a pretty decent up and coming place with growing choices of restaurants and cafes to cater for the ever so increasing number of white collar crowd from the surrounding new high rise office towers. Parking was surprisingly easy at the Sphere, or it may be just that we got lucky. Busy working people translates into hungry people, so the place was packed and we had to push our way through the throng of equally ravenous lunch crowd. Not to mention there was a supermarket conveniently located at the lower ground floor, giving way to opportunistic grocery shopping for the brave- hearted. 

We decided to try our luck at Oiso, a Korean restaurant. The fact that we had to queue for a table was something new for us. Usually, we tend to shy way from spending unnecessary energy expenditure for food, i.e. queueing. We waited for may be 5 minutes, or 8 minutes tops. Nobody was counting as they had the decency to provide us with a cooling drink while we waited. As we weren’t well versed in Korean cuisine, we honestly did not know what they served us. Looked like barley, or it could also be rice. Who knows? But it was clever ploy to keep the customers and for that Master Yoda gave the service a 7 out of 10 which N and S concurred with.

We really wanted to sit indoors as it was quite hot al fresco. Alas, hunger won and we agreed to sit outdoors. Though shaded and equipped with fans, we could not escape the fact that this is Malaysian humid afternoon weather we are talking about. And for that the ambience was rated 3 by Baja Hiram and 5 by Master Yoda. N & S scored somewhere in between. 

The service was quite fast in obtaining our order and delivering our food and drinks, now coined as ‘order to table’ by Baja Hitam. You know, like ‘door to needle’ time in treating patients with heart attacks. My, my… we have quite a reviewer here. Though some mishap did occur with our order due to miscommunication. The attending waiter did not enter our order for kimchi pancake but it turned out for the best anyway as we sincerely could not even attempt to eat another dish after finishing our own lunch sets. S scored the service as 7/10 while Baja Hitam scored it lower at 4/10 as he was a fan of kimchi pancakes, even though we doubted he could have finished it. All of us ordered the lunch sets which came with 3 refillable side dishes.

Baja Hitam opted for the less famous noodle soup with beef set. See, it is so not typical Korean that it did not even have a Korean name. He did not think drinks were necessary as he was having soup and soup is basically flavoured water after all. You wonder what is inside Baja Hitam’s head sometimes. He scored his food as 7/10, managing to finish his noodles and beef but raising the white flag on the absurdly large amount of soup. His lunch set cost around RM 16.50 post taxes which is typical of restaurant food price in most shopping malls nowadays.

Being a Korean food virgin, Master Yoda had nothing to compare her beef bibimbap to. So she scored her food a 6/10. The iced plum juice helped to quench her thirst in the hot and humid ambience. We hope this eating experience did not in any way detract Master Yoda in reviewing other Korean food in the future. The beef bibimbap was RM 16.90 and the drink was RM 5.90, costing RM 25.30 overall after taxes (6% GST and 5% service charge).

S also had the beef bibimbap, along with iced honey citron tea. The bibimbap was tasty once mixed with the sauce. She did wish there was a little bit more of the crunchy rice crust at the bottom of the bowl though. The sides were so- so. The fried salty anchovies were not as crunchy as hoped but tasted nice nevertheless while the kimchi was edible. As long as the kimchi does not sting her throat, hey that’s fine with her. The last side dish was some pickled radish. She gave it a miss because she was not a big fan of radish in general. The honey citron tea was heavenly in the hot weather. The candied marmalade bits added a bittersweet twist to the otherwise typical drink. The price of her food and drink was the same as Master Yoda’s.

N had the kimchi stew with rice and iced organic barley tea. He felt that the food was nothing special compared to other Korean food he has tasted. Hence he rated his food as 6/10. His lunch set was RM 15.90 and coupled with the RM 1.90 drink, his lunch came to RM 19.70 including taxes.

Overall, a good lunch outing with friends at a relatively different place than the usual spots. We left with our tummies full and ready to bring our A game back to work. Who are we kidding? I bet most of us wish that we had siestas over here like the clever Spaniards in our post- lunch stupor.

As they say in Korea, annyeonghi kaseyo!

Honest Foodies Review Team