I am a huge fan of Korean food – I love cooking it, eating it and watching it. I was very excited to see a brand new concept coming to Yaletown featuring pajeon (파전). In addition to serving up these delicious savoury Korean pancakes, they will also be featuring makgeolli (Korean rice wine) from local supplier VANMAK (Vancouver Makgeolli). Check out my full review of Mapo Pancake House below!
What is Pajeon?
Pajeon (파전) is a savoury Korean pancake made with a base batter of eggs, flour and scallions. It differs from other similar pancakes because it uses a batter instead of a dough (like Chinese scallion pancakes). ‘Pajeon’ is a type of jeon with scallion as the main ingredient. Mapo Pancake House has several traditional variations as well as some more unique and modern versions.
In addition to the larger pancakes they are also serving up jeon (전). Jeon is a Korean fritter, where a meat, vegetable, seafood etc. is coated in wheat flour and egg before being fried.
Mapo Pancake House Menu
The menu at Mapo Pancake House is very straight forward. No surprises, the majority of the menu focuses on pancakes. The pancakes menu is divided into Large, Medium and Small. Where the Large pancakes are similar in size to the pancakes you would get at most Korean restaurants. The medium size pancakes are palm shaped in size and the small are a quarter of that.
There is only two non pancake options on the menu – a seafood rice cake dish and a smoked pork bulgogi.
The drink menu features a variety of Makgeolli including some unique flavours like chestnut, strawberry, and green grape. However, if you’re indecisive, I highly recommend you try their Makgeolli sampler to try all the flavours!
Mapo Pancake House Review – Pancakes
On my visit I had a sampling of the following dishes:
- Seafood Green Onion Pancake ($32.00)
- Crispy Thin Potato and Cheese Pancake ($30.00)
- Mung Bean Pancakes ($15.00)
- Yook Jeon ($15.00)
- Smoked Pork Bulgogi ($26.00)
To start we had the Seafood Green Onion Pancake. This dish features prawns, scallops, squid, imitation crab meat, clam meat and green onion. This was nice and crispy on the edges with plenty of filling. The house soy went really well with this dish. This was delicious with the original makgeolli.
Trying something a little less traditional we went with the Crispy Thin Potato and Cheese Pancake. This pancake features julienned potato, cheddar, mozzarella, parmesan, chopped bacon and green onion. This was like a giant hashbrown stuffed with breakfast. It’s a very heavy and indulgent pancake. I think it would be perfect for a post drinking snack. There was so much cheese in this dish, and the cheese pull was so satisfying.
The Mung Bean Pancakes features mung bean paste, napa cabbage, radish, bean sprout, green onion, onion and ground pork. The pancakes were a touch oily. However, the edges were very crispy. The lemon helps to lighten up the dish as well.
The Yook Jeon features sliced beef and egg. This was the unanimous favourite among my friends. The staff also mentioned it was one of their favourites as well. The pancake was very savoury and it was so good with soju! It is served with a Korean mustard soy sauce and it was the perfect dip.
Our only non pancake dish of the night was Smoked Pork Bulgogi. The pork had a nice smoky flavour which went well with the sweet and salty soy sauce. It was a good dish, but this is a pancake house after all so definitely try the pancakes first!
Mapo Pancake House Review – Makgeolli (Rice Wine)
The Makgeolli at Mapo Pancake House is made locally at VANMAK. The makgeolli has no chemical additives and is a fresh rice wine. They have a ton of flavours to choose from, but I am a traditionalist and we stuck with regular Makgeolli. We tried the Strawberry one for fun, and it’s good if you’re a fan of very sweet drinks.
Mapo Pancake House
Address: 1130 Mainland St, Vancouver, BC V6B 2T9
Website: https://www.instagram.com/mapopancakehouse/