Mateusz Masternak
Google
Hankki is a sister restaurant to Hanana Sushi - a restaurant that I truly enjoy and have returned to several times. Both restaurants are recommended by the Michelin guide and I was looking forward to trying a restaurant that advertised itself as Korean - Japanese.
Arrived for lunch and was presented with main, lunch and drink menus. The main menu looked tired and worn out. Lunch menu was nice and concise although only one of the five dishes was Korean. This has been quite a suprise to me as the restaurant advertised itself as Korean first. The Japanese theme could have also been seen in the choice of wooden chopsticks, which were set at the table on our arrival.
I ordered Genmaicha tea, cheaper of the bentos to share and two mains from the lunch menu.
Bento was good. Sushi rice was, in my opinion, under seasoned and the budget pick for one of the dishes was avocado maki. I feel that either cucumber roll or perhaps even egg omlet or chive nigiri would have been better and more authentic picks.
The bibimbap was poor. It was served in a standard bowl rather than a hot stone one. Whilst neither way to serve bibimbap is wrong, a standard bowl resembles the style of quick eateries and home cooking. Furthermore, the beef mince in the dish lacked seasoning and looked "pale". Sauce served with it was not spicy enough for my liking, but I tend to prefer things on the spicier side.
Korokke Sake came with an amazing cabbage salad which was the best part of the dish. The croquettes were okay but I didn't enjoy the sauce. I cannot comment on the miso soup that I was meant to get with the dish as it never arrived and I felt too awkward to ask for it at the time.
Both Korokke and Bibimbap were not dishes that could have been eaten with chopsticks alone. We had to explicitly request additional cutlery, which I felt should have been provided for us with the dishes.
The overall quality of the service was poor. There seemed to be a good amount of staff on the ground although for some reason the waiters kept alternating attending to the table, which was a bit confusing. Despite that, it was very difficult to get attention of one of the servers as they appeared to be too busy chatting. It also took way too long for the waiter to check in with us after getting the dessert menu. Despite finding some of the dessert options interesting, I decided not to give them a try due to the wait and wanted to just pay and leave. I attempted to pay for food at the counter as I didn't want to sit around for much longer, but I was asked to go back to our table to settle the bill, which seemed quite out of place and left a bitter taste in my mouth after an already questionable experience.
Honestly, I am not sure how Hankki managed to get a Michelin recommendation, but I know one thing for sure, It won't be getting a recommendation from me.
