Ireh Restaurant - Restaurants On Oahu Honolulu, Hawaii

Ireh Restaurant is interesting because it serves pretty authentic Korean food with a healthy twist. They use a lot of fresh local vegetables. They don't have heavy typical BBQ meat dishes and they don't give lots of side dishes. They served only 2 side dishes with my meal and it was enough. I didn't really miss other side dishes you normally get at a Korean restaurant.

I ordered the vegetable bibimbap. For those who don't know what bibimbap is, it literally means mixed rice. It normally has variety of typical Korean vegetables usually cooked and seasoned such as bean sprouts, spinach, and daikon and topped with marinated BBQ beef and fried egg. I guess you could say it's a Korean version of Loco Moco with vegetables.

But at Ireh Restaurant, they use fresh raw vegetables like lettuce, cilantro, cucumber, red cabbage, and alpha alpha sprouts which I found very refreshing and I ordered with quinoa instead of white rice to make it even healthier. It came with masago fish eggs and no sign of beef and egg. You add the hot chili sauce to tailor to your preferred spiciness. It has the flavor of traditional Korean bibimbap because of the hot chili sauce but the crunchiness of fresh raw vegetables makes you feel like you are eating something much healthier. I felt like I was eating a light salad dish than a heavy rice dish. I loved it! I'll definitely order it again.

I also ordered their regular Topokki which is spicy rice cake mixed with fish cake and vegetables. It was good enough but not outstanding.

For dessert, I ordered Red Bean Shave Ice. It was just average.

Overall I enjoyed what I ate and they have a lot of dishes I would like to try next time I go there.