Sagye Korean Pot Rice at Wheelock Place

Sagye Korean Pot Rice at Wheelock Place is their second restaurant in Singapore. The first is in Tanjong Pagar. The restaurant specialises in sotbab or 솥밥 which is “pot rice” in Korean.  We tried this traditional Korean dish of rice cooked in a heavy stone pot and topped with meat or other ingredients.

New Korean Pot Rice Restaurant at Wheelock Place

Diners visiting the new Sagye Korean Pot Rice restaurant at Wheelock Place are greeted by a mock-up of a traditional Korean cooking area. The design is a mix of traditional hanok-inspired interior decor and modern K-Pop entertainment. Traditional elements like bamboo curtains, lamps, Hangari pots, are intertwined with modern tech. 

A large overhead screen displays scenes of Korean cherry blossoms while the TV screen on the wall provides non-stop K-pop videos (without audio) thoughout our lunch. It was a full house at the time of our lunch on a weekday. This is a no reservation, walk-in only restaurant.

Sagye Korean Pot Rice Restaurant Menu

Here are pictures of some pages of the Sagye Korean Pot Rice menu. The restaurant menus are also available online on their Instagram page (link below). We decided on three types of pot rice – beef short rib ($34.80++), Kurobuta pork ($26.80++) and a “Netflix-Inspired Culinary Class Wars Dongpo Rou “.

Korean Restaurant Lunch at Wheelock Place

Our lunch started with a serving of a lightly flavoured soup and four types of side dishes. These side dishes were topped up on request.

Sagye Korean Pot Rice Netflix-Inspired Culinary Class Wars Dongpo Rou 

This was a dish that was on our must try list. It was inspired by the Culinary Class Wars series on Netflix (which I have not watched and so am unable to make a comparison). The dish looks like a Chinese “cong bak” – braised pork belly heavily flavoured by sweet and savoury soy sauce flavours.

We were impressed by how beautifully it looked in real life, very close to what was shown in the menu. It was also very fatty. A thin layer of lean meat was heavily outnumbered by the thick chewy skin and two slabs of fatty pork. The taste was wonderful but may be upsetting to anyone supposed to be on a diet.

Almost as nice, but without any guilt was the beef short rib. Slices of very tender beef that also had a sweet beefy flavour tasted even better when mixed with the raw egg, rice and accompanying ingredients.

The Sagye Korean pot rice Kurobuta pork was also a good dish – slices of the pork on rice. Without trying the other two, we would have been very impressed with this dish. But we just were not as ‘wowed’ by this dish.

How to Enjoy Sagye’s Pot Rice

Lunch was not over after scooping up all the food in the pots. A last step remained. Not to waste the wonderful flavours and remaining morsels of food, hot tea was poured into the almost empty pots and left to soak for a few minutes before revealing the soupy porridge. Here is a picture of the instructions.

This was how the last bits of our meals looked like. A far cry from the beautiful plating they started off with (picture below).

It was an interesting dining experience which brought back memories of our recent visit to Seoul.

Ratings:
Food: 4
Service: 3
Value: 3
Atmosphere: 3
Overall Rating: 3 TOPs

Sagye Korean Pot Rice Restaurant
501 Orchard Rd, #02-19 Wheelock Place
Singapore 238880

Opening Hours: 11 am–3 pm; 5–10 pm

Nearby MRT Station: Orchard (NS22 | TE14)

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