Toodouri, North Melbourne

Quasi DIY Korean BBQ - the lovely staff do most of the work, leave smelling like you've done it all.

Gami Chicken & Beer, Melbourne

The new simple night out presented by Korean styled fried chicken and a keg load of booze. Supported by other classics done well, and some not so classic.



Original fried chicken in it’s own secret recipe of herbs and spices. It’s crispiness as if excessively dabbed with blotting paper, dehydrated and sun baked. Love it.



50/50 plate of flavoured fried chicken with a sweet chilli, and sweet ginger soy sauces.



Beer washes it all down, and makes you forget about the arteries closing over. And about your mum.



Seafood or Kim-chi pancakes - Dense, but pillowy soft with a bit of spring.



Chicken Gizzards – for the initiated.



Simply fried corn and cheese – intense, and probably definitely for the initiated.



Fried Dumplings – rip into the chewy blistered casing.

Putting a new K in KFC.

4.5 / 5 yums!
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Where? 100 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, VIC
What? Plates of chicken around $25-30, rest $10-15, Kegs $30ish

7 & 7, Carnegie

A full Korean experience with the cooked for you and the cook yourself. It might feel like Mars Attacks but those UFO extractor fans will prevent the aromas of mixed BBQ meats excreting from your pores.



Bibimbap – raw egg on next time please, but glad the stone pot could cause severe burns that allows all ingredients a good char coating.



Kimchi Stew



Spicy pork Bulgogi

Authentic, delicious, value. I’ll be back.

4 / 5 yums!
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Where? Shop B, 21 Koornang Rd, Carnegie, VIC
What? Around $10-15

Kim Chi Grandma, Carnegie

I’ve been missing my Korean gran at Box Hill, and although it’s a bit of a trek across town, the trip to Carnegie to get a kim chi fix is worth it. I’m glad the old, original gal is still going strong and doesn’t look a day over 10 years. All greatest hits are featured, from the slippery translucent glass noodles of Jap chae, to the pork and beef bulgogis, kim chi pancake and stews. Bibimbap is soft though, missing the charring heat of a stonepot that doesn’t provide justice to the julienned veg, rice and shredded cow meat. A small blemish that you can easily forgive, it is the grandma cookin after all.

3 / 5 yums!
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Where? 125 Koornang Road, Carnegie, VIC
What? Average Main - $15







Left to Right : Pork Bulgogi, Kim Chi Stew, Beef Bulgogi, , BiBimBab, Japchae, Seafood pancake

Miso Korean Cafe

Quiet on a weekday, unassuming, but sticks out like a Korean needle in a Western Bentleigh haystack that is slowly catching up with the times. Won’t find anything you can’t get in Carnegie or Holmesglen, the lunch time bento box’s comes with salad and mini pancakes but value could be better with the addition of fried mandoo or something. Beef bulgogi not the nicely browned caramelised hot plate stuff but has all the sweet flavours you’d expect. Dolsot bibimbap, hotpot is scorching for the DYI stir-fry but let down by rice that was just on the wrong side of soft. That’s just being overly critical though. I’ll should just harden up instead.


3 / 5 yums!
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Where? 374 Centre Rd, Bentleigh, VIC
What? Around $10

Louis Gourmet Lunch

Sporting a name eponymous with French kings, you’d expect food fit for one. But don’t expect haute cuisine, it’s one part Chinese in the bain maries featuring Western favourites lemon or honey chicken and sambal or cashew chicken and one part Korean with various bibimbabs and other freshly cooked sizzling plates. A kings ransom not required as payment in exchange for the food, they even throw in the tea for free.

2.5 / 5 yums!
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Where? 84 Williams St, Melbourne, VIC
What? Under $10

Korean Seoul Restaurant

There should be plenty more suits in here from the surrounding offices, but admittedly this Korean restaurant isn’t exactly the kind of place to be seen if you’re a wannabe high flyer or impress that important client.

But who really cares when $10.50 of your hard earned runs to Seoul and back with possibly the best value proposition lunch in town. For that price, you get a bento style box with your choice of beef bulgogi, spicy pork or chicken to name a few, a salad with a pleasant vinegar-sesame-soy dressing, a couple of takoyaki fried octopus balls, fried mandoo dumpling, a crumbed prawn, rice, miso soup, a drink and a seat without having to rub shoulders with a stranger. So the beef bulgogi is poor, the meat gritty and tough but easily excused when the other options are awesome.

Maybe this is the place for that corporate lunch. Might show you have the nose for value add.


3 / 5 yums!
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Where? 369 Lt Bourke St, Melbourne, VIC
What? Lunch around $10

CJ Lunchbox

It’s hard to walk through Hardware Lane and not get distracted by the glitz between Bourke and Lonsdale. But go a bit further, towards Little Lonsdale, you’ll find a warm little Korean joint that does a cracking cooked lunch for under $9. K style bentos with your choice of bulgogi (pig, chook, cow), the pork lathered in a thickish, fiery red marinade that is more harmless than it looks, with a nice chilli hit balanced out by sweetness. For those who don’t like eating out of a segmented box, most of the Korean café favourites are there cooked to order. Value if you can make it all the way down.


3 / 5 yums!
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Where? 127 Hardware St, Melbourne, VIC
What? Under $10

su:t and wine, Box Hill

There’s no need to break out into a cold sweat because you forgot to put on your steel jocks that may have prevented an uncomfortable probe by aliens. Luckily extra terrestrials don’t own those discs hovering above each table at Sut and Wine.

Actually, those plunger looking thingos are the thingos that will prevent you from smelling edible. It’s encouraged to select from the DIY BBQ section of the menu, to no doubt save the chefs in the kitchen effort. There’s banquet packages or order the uncooked flesh individually though the pricing seems unfair, remembering that you have to do all the work. If only you could BYO. At least the quality of the cuts are good, from the pork belly to the steak fillet. Of course there’s hotpot as well including a sweetish bulgogi beef stew with plenty of veg. Bibimbap done nicely in the hot stone bowl, the only major disappointment was the seafood kimchi pancake where the prawns were not shelled.

It’s a poor oversight that cannot hide behind the average (by no means poor) Korean food at above average prices. I might need an actual plunger to extract the shells from my throat. Or that probe could have been useful.


2.5 / 5 yums!
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Where? 970-972 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill, VIC
What? Banquets $40, meats and dishes around $15

Kim Chi Hut

With beautiful photos of snow peas, capsicums and other fresh veggie produce, you could have been excused for thinking they just racked them for the local Safeway in the Glen. They certainly don’t allude to the fact that it’s a damn fine Korean restaurant.

I miss the Korean in Sydney but Kim Chi Hut definitely helps ease the pain. Hot pots and DIY BBQ on the menu but I find joy in having the chefs to the work. And what good work it is, shown in the seafood pancake filled with prawns, squid, spring onion and chilli that’s more brown than other versions but the soft pancake texture is still there. Jap chae of translucent glass noodles and stir fried beef and capsicum is lathered in a sweetish soy gravy and a good example of the dish. Lovers of mild chilli will enjoy the pork bulgogi and spicy chicken, though the level of heat can be raised on request. Control given to the diner for the bibimbap, a chilli sauce can be added to the hot stone pot and stirred through the rice, sesame oil, julienned carrot, cucumber, mushrooms and finely sliced beef mixture.

Despite being hidden on the unglamorous strip of Coleman, it’s a shining light. It might not be a fresh addition to Glenny but a welcomed one.


3.5 / 5 yums!
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Where? 185 Coleman Parade. Glen Waverley, VIC
What? Dishes around $15