What do you think your mom wants to eat?

I don’t know but I want some Korean.

Closed | Burnt Rice Korean Restaurant tl;dr

One of my least favorite things during any major holiday be it Mother’s Day or Easter is crowding with every other family celebrating together causing restaurants to charge higher than normal prices or enforce a “buffet only” dining option.

This year after Easter service, we decided to switch it up and head to a local restaurant I’ve been meaning to try, Burnt Rice, which is just down the street from my church.

Thankfully when we arrived, we were still fairly early and the restaurant was only half empty meaning no wait, yay! The restaurant itself is fairly small and is located in the Curtner Plant complex. Walking in your eye is immediately drawn to their bar, fairly well stalked for a small restaurant bar and the two dining sections.

One section, away from the door, is fairly dark and had a large group so when initially sat there we decided to move to a table towards the door which let more of the natural light of the restaurant in.

In terms of the dining option, the dishes are definitely a fusion of Korean food with things like “kimchi burritos” or “gangnam fries”. For lunch for our party of five, we ordered:

• Pork Belly Musubi: Similar to a spam musubi but instead of the spam, there is a nice piece of well seasoned, moist pork belly. Great appetizer to start! I personally wish the rice portion was slightly smaller but it was delicious especially served with an sweet sauce often found on unagi
• Cajun Salmon Salad: Despite looking “Cajun” or blackened, the salmon itself was not as flavorful as expected; however, the salad itself with tomatoes, cucumber, avocados, was very tasty

• Spicy Pork: Traditional spicy pork served on a sizzling platter- normal and as expected, nothing out of the ordinary, just a solid spicy pork. This also came with either salad or soup. We got the soup since we already had a salad and today it was something that resembled a Chinese jook or porridge but slightly sweet. While it was nice of them to give it to all five of us it was definitely very light and a bit tasteless

• Seafood Stir Fry: While this was a fairly large noodle portion with an assortment of seafood including clams, mussels, shrimps and squid, unfortunately this dish came out long after (a good 30 minutes + after) the other dishes came out and we were practically done eating. We almost thought they were still catching the seafood! In addition, the shrimp, while big and juicy, it was still translucent and not cooked all the way, a big No-No.
• Ramen: I didn’t personally try this dish, my Mom got it since she wasn’t feeling that well but it was packed with ingredients. The only unfortunate thing is that while we asked to confirm there was zucchini in it, when it came out there wasn’t actually zucchini and they had to bring it out eventually when they realized it wasn’t in the dish after we asked and they had already confirmed.

Overall, despite the restaurant not being very busy when we arrived, the waitresses seemed inexperienced and slow. The dishes were not brought out together which really gave little room to actually enjoy the last dish. Lastly, not everything was cooked well or even included all the ingredients listed in the menu on the first round.

Perhaps it was just this time and the staff got a little overwhelmed with the additional influx of people that came in closer to noon but overall I’d just say it’s OK.

A+ for the portions as they were very generous.

Closed | Burnt Rice Korean Fusion Restaurant

• 121 Curtner Ave, San Jose, N California, USA
• Street View
• 408 / 490-4776

What do you think of fusion food?