Miso Gardens is unassuming. If you find yourself wondering if there is anything going on while you’re at the front, persist. There is life at the back. We were curious about Korean cuisine in Kampala so a friend took me to one of the oldest Korean restaurants in the city.
First, they have an extensive menu that we could make neither heads nor tails of. A waiter had to guide us and explain everything including things like taste and portion size.
Despite numerous attempts at learning how to use chopsticks, it appears that i am unteachable. Luckily, as you can see, the place setting came with a fork to accommodate me and those like me.
The meal came with appetizers, all firsts for us; Miso soup which was warm and briny…like the ocean but far less salty, G nuts fried in a way that i have never seen, they were moist and dusted with sim sim. We are accustomed to eating them dry but this was not bad per se. Rather it was interesting and made more so by the fact that they were barely a handful. Kimchi was also served on the side.
We were so tickled by the kimchi that we ordered another serving to get a better feel of it.
Kimchi is a fermented food made primarily with cabbage. It also has chilli (hence the red colour). As a chilli lover, i quite liked it. It is on the salty side, cool and fairly crunchy. I was so tickled by it that, following a recipe online, i went home and made a batch and ate it for some weeks. (I should make another). If you do try, be prepared for the strong smell that will escape your fridge every time you open the door. In time you will stop smelling it altogether.
I ordered a pork and vegetable dish whose name for the life of me i can’t recall. It came to us very loud, sizzling and bubbling all over the place.
Because everything was new on the palette, we ordered old faithful, plain old steamed rice. It was welcome and a trusted refuge from time to time.
At the end of the meal the waiter asked if we wanted to try sake, a rice wine. feeling like we had tried enough things for one day, we declined. Maybe next time.