Man Doo Hyang

I love coming here for their home made rice wine! There are two types (regular and premium). Both are amazing but the premium goes down smoother. I love it because it doesn’t taste strong but I find I get tipsy fast!
Their food is good as well. I like to order their large pork bone soup which is in a large wok that is on the stove in the middle of the table. This is good to share with 3 people as the portion is quite large.
Service is friendly as well :)

** Unilocal ALERT** Man Doo Hyang is under new ownership/​management. Still a good place. Menu has changed somewhat, but still the same delicious (huge) kimchi mandu, chapsal sundae, bae-​kimchi (white kimchi) and regular baechu kimchi and kkagdugi for panchan. The broth in the mandu soup was definitely more tasty than before and less salty. I’ll update on Unilocal when I figure out the (new) name of the restaurant. Very generous with the panchan but after one refill of the baechu kimchi as well as the HUGE dumplings, we could barely move we were so full! Definitely worth returning to.

My friend got me here with the promise of fist-​sized dumplings, and I wasn’t let down.
The dumplings here are gigantic, as are their portions. Taste-​wise, it’s okay. Nothing really blew my mind here and I likely won’t be in a rush to return. The fried dumplings were tastier than the soup dumplings.
Service was good, and the place is very casual. There’s parking out front, which is nice.

This is a nice little family atmosphere Korean restaurant. Man Doo means dumplings in Korean. As the name suggests, their specialty is dumplings. These are not the Chinese type (which I really like as well). These are massive dumplings filled with your choice of kimchi or pork. The great thing about these little bundles of joy is that there’s virtually no oil in these, unlike the Chinese kind of dumplings. But it still tastes great.
Anyways, if having a dark or fancy atmosphere is a must for you, this is not the restaurant for you. This is the restaurant you go to if you want decent food at decent prices, which is perfect for me.
I’ve been here maybe 4 – 5 times. One special thing about this place is that they serve you mini dumplings as a side dish (non-​refillable). This is a nice perk. They serve 3 other side dishes: radish (white), kimchi, and another kind of radish (seasoned with that Korean red sauce).
You can’t go wrong with the Man Doo Hyang Jeonggol. This is a kind of table cooking dumpling mix in a pot cooked to boiling temperature at your table. There’s mushrooms, vegetables, 6 dumplings, rice cakes, handmade noodles and some pork. They also have plenty of more traditional dishes like cold noodles, bibimbap etc. But if you come here and it’s your first time, I recommend getting something with dumplings.
This is a place that I frequent because it’s close to my house, their food is healthy (and so are a lot of Korean dishes), and you get decent value from them. Their main customers are Korean so no reviewer should be critical of their English. But that’s how you know you’re getting real Korean food.

LOVE the big yummy spicy dumplings here!
I always bring some people so that I can order the spicy dumpling noodle hot pot — they say it serves 2 or 3, but I think it can serve 2 – 4, depending on your appetite. You get some of those delicious dumplings, and thick yummy noodles, rice cakes (tip: wait to eat them at the end so that they’ve soaked up all that flavourful broth), mushrooms, veggies… Unfortunately, the dumplings have shrunk over the years. They used to be huge! Still tasty, but less of it…
After the soupy phase of the hot pot, you can pay a couple of bucks to get the fried rice with seaweed, kimchi, other goodies at the end. It’s so much fun to scrape that off the bottom of the pot, and delicious too!
They give you little tiny dumplings at the beginning of the meal too, which is nice.
I don’t know if other choices here are so good. I tried the fried dumplings once and they were kind of tough and dry. I’d stick to the hot pot.

Let me start this review by saying that I am Korean. Having grown up in Korea, I am extremely picky about going out to Korean restaurants in Toronto as I find most of them offer disappointing experiences to Koreans and non-​Koreans alike. I love Man Doo Hyang because this restaurant specializes in a few things and they do them well. There is nothing worse than a restaurant (not just Korean) that offers a long menu and can’t do any of them right.
Word of caution for those coming to this restaurant. Korean dumplings are very different from Chinese style dumplings. Traditionally, Korean dumplings are filled with mixtures of tofu, shredded cabbage, bean sprouts, pork, shredded kimchi and so on… so their fillings are less firm than Chinese dumpling fillings. They are usually much larger than what you will get in Chinese dumpling restaurants. So if you’re looking for mostly meat packed dumplings, Korean dumplings may not do it for you.
Man Doo Hyang does excel at making their hand cut noodles. Their «not so brothy» beef broth for Kal Gook Soo is due to the fact that they do not use MSG (unlike Buk-​Chang-​Dong Soon Tu Fu where all you can taste is MSG in their broth, yet people RAVE about their broth) and does not overload it with salt. This is why there are small stainless steel containers filled with soy sauce + hot chili flakes + chopped green onion on each table so you can add more flavour to your soup. I personally prefer under-​seasoned broth so I can actually have most of the soup without ingesting ridiculous amount of sodium.
I’m also a big fan of their Bo-​Ssam (boiled pork) served with cabbage and oyster kimchi. Their Soon Dae (Korean style blood sausage) platter is served with good quality soon dae which are made on site with couple of pieces of sliced liver and lungs.

Service could be better, but the food was good.
They gave us these complimentary mini dumplings with meat inside. I think they give this to everyone.

As Jennifer K notes, it’s very homey. A bit divey. a bit loud if you get seated next to some seriously old school ajusshis (one ajusshi… two ajusshis? ajusshen? ajussha?) debating the merits of Roh Tae-​woo over Park Chung-​hee.
As the name implies, this is a dumpling house although I was looking forward to a bigger range of dumpling choices. I’d love if they had some wang mandoo (king dumplings).
Don’t be fooled by the small dumplings that come out between the banchan (the free appetizers) and the main order. Me and Slinky Woman were first confused, thinking these were the dumplings we ordered. They, errr, didn’t really look like the ones on the menu. Fortunately, they brought out the real dumplings.
Service is as good as it can be although there was a bit of a language barrier. This is definitely a place for Koreans and by Koreans. Still, you won’t feel unwelcome.
The small lot makes parking tight depending on day/​time you go.
Nothing really wrong but nothing about the dumplings thrilled me. Can’t say I’d be back.

My friend and I wanted to eat some noodles yesterday evening in the North York area. So off to Unilocal I go!
We ended up at Man Doo Hyang — swayed by the fact that they had handmade noodles. We both ordered the handmade noodles with traditional Korean dumplings — I got myself the kimchi one, which was absolutely delicious. Noodles were okay. The broth wasn’t that impressive and it didn’t have much taste to it.
Banchans were good for the two of us — including daikon, kimchi daikon and kimchi (which they refill if you run out). They also give you complimentary dumplings as well!
Not too bad considering for a small little restaurant.

Turns out this is the same place that I have been to after finding in it in CheapEats book few year back, the name did not register in my brain and after reading a few Korean lists I decided to give it a go, as it turned out a second go.
Needless to say that I wasn’t wowed the first time around, hence is the lack of name recognition. This time I will definitely remember it but not for the food it serves as much as for the contingent of its customers. There was a large group of youngsters who were already beyond their drinking capacities when we walked in (I immediately remembered Karl R with his Irish-​Korean comparison), who were later joined by an old white man in even better condition getting another beer as if he had not had enough already. He was so drunk that the amplitude of his swinging was easily 180 degrees from side to side.
So, among the yelling and cheering of the young group and inconsistent swivels of a drunken whitey we tried to enjoy the hand made noodle and dumpling soup as well as a beef hot pot. Neither of which was impressive enough to compensate for the atmosphere, the noddles are indeed tasty and have nice slurpiness factor, but the broth of both soups was lacking in flavor or better say brothiness, that’s right, it felt more like hot water than a beef broth. The dumplings were so insanely huge, that eating them directly from the pot meant burning your mouth as they could not cool fast enough. Also the stuffing was not that fantastic at all. The banchan was ok and the petite dumpling on the house were nice. Both soups were around 7 – 8 $ which is a steal for a huge portion they serve. IMHO, use only for lunch at your own discretion.

I feel warm and fuzzy when I was eating at Man Doo Hyang!
There are not too many Korean places I visited that give me that homey feeling. You know how you have a sense that the waitstaffs really attentive, really care about you and make sure you have a good meal?
If you come here as a lone eater… and you are not too hungry, just order the noodle with the dumplings ($ 6.95). As they not only have banchans for your dine in pleasures, they also give you extra mini dumplings!
The noodles are nice and chewy with a lot of bite! And is Fresh! thick like elastic bands, luckily does not taste like it! The soup based is a little peppery… and it is perfect on a cold winter day!
The Kimchi and Pork dumplings I found it way too garlicky and even have a huge chunks of raw garlic inside. I think I have bad garlicky smell for the rest of the day!
The waitress realized that we were sharing that noodle soup, not only she got us an extra bowl… she have the extra bowl filled with the broth! This is the first time that ever happened to me… ever! She is so friendly and smiley… +1 star!
My suggestion comes for the noodles in beef broth and skip the dumplings if you cannot stand the garlic! :P

3.5 *Stars*
After visiting the Man Doo Hyang in Mississauga, I had HIGH expectations for this one which is closer to society. After a few prior meals it was good that I can walk from Centrepoint Mall at Yonge/​Steeles to this location as when I passed it a few times it had limited parking opportunties.
As I walked in I was greeted and directed to a table which was ANY table because it was a Wednesday afternoon. The décor is not anything close to what they had in the Mississauga branch. For casual dining then do this North York but for formal then ‘Sauga is the one to go. The restaurant size was also limited as you have to realize it is located on Yonge street.
Same menu so I got the EXACT same thing, HANDMADE Noodles with Dumplings in Beef Broth ($ 7.99). It came out the same way in a huge bowl where the Soup was covering all the Noodles and Dumplings. The Noodles is still AMAZING but the Dumpling this time didn’t go as well.
While the Handmade Noodles is one of my fav all time in Toronto, the Dumplings this time which I got 1 Kimchi and 2 Cucumber had overpowering GARLIC and raw garlic at that which I love to eat but the combination within the Dumpling made it weird even for me.
What I loved about this place is that it’s so SMALL that I could hear the cook behind the door do all the chopping for my meal. That’s when you know it’s freshly made.