MandooBar

Le Fooding Guide’s 2015 best bar à délices

Languorous K-pop playing in the background, a light inlaid wooden bar, a concrete workspace… Mandoobar is so good-looking! So what did we eat at this original creation from the great Kim Kwang-Loc the night we went? To start, 10 mandoo neatly arranged in their bamboo baskets (wheat and sticky rice flour dumplings, similar to Japanese gyoza), steamed and stuffed with a delicious mixture of kimchi, pork, garlic, tofu and chili – or beef, tofu, shiitake mushrooms, sweet potato vermicelli noodles, soy sauce, garlic and black pepper – incredible! Followed by a freshly-made sea bream tartare that was perfectly seasoned with soy sauce, Korean pepper, shiso and buckwheat. And finally, after a beautiful salad (cabbage, soybeans, peppers, radish, garlic sprouts, passionfruit and yuzu juice), there was a delicious homemade passion fruit sorbet. // V.Z.

FEELING THIRSTY? Besides their bekseju, a fermented sticky rice Korean liqueur with a dozen spices (€9 for a half-bottle, €16 for a full bottle), there’s a good junmai Daiginzo sake (€8 for 80 ml), Korean Max beer (€6 for 330 ml) and Korean Sejak green tea (€9), along with a Chenin from the Domaine Les Terres Blanches in Provence (€7 a glass) or Simplement Gamay, a Coteaux-d’Ancenis from the Domaine de la Paonnerie (€35 a bottle).

PRICE: Dumplings €8-12 for six, €9-13 for eight, €10-14 for 10, tartares €10-12, sides €4-5, desserts €5.