From ribbons of brisket to highly marbled bavette and juicy short-rib, Chippendale’s new K-BBQ joint Hongdae Pocha is great for groups looking for a grill-your-own meat blowout.
Korean$$
South Korea delivers powerfully flavoured comfort food like no other. Hear the crunch of its fried chicken. Feel the cool slipperiness across a subgenre of refreshing noodles. Taste a Korean stew’s command of spice and ferments. It’s a cuisine that offers what most people want to eat most of the time.
Thin metal chopsticks excepted (if you can pick up soft tofu with these, you’re doing better than me), Korea also knows how people want to eat, which is with a big group of friends or family and lots of booze. The grill-your-own meat blowout of Korean barbecue is dining at its most communal, which is a big reason why it has become one of the fastest-growing types of restaurant in Sydney.
Hongdae Pocha is one of the newer K-BBQ spots. (Hongdae is a popular arts and clubbing neighbourhood of Seoul; a pocha is a casual, street-side set-up serving food.) It opened in July inside a former brewery site at Chippendale’s Central Park and, although the large dining room is decked out with neon lights and corrugated iron to resemble Korean streets, there’s enough heritage brick and machinery on display to make it feel connected to the area. It also has the shiniest hotplates and tables I’ve ever encountered, not to mention the gleaming exhaust pipes that hang over each grill like steampunk periscopes.
If you haven’t been to a Korean barbecue before, here are some things you need to know. The cutlery may be in a drawer under the table. The scissors are for snipping meat into manageable pieces when it hits the grill. There will be complimentary bachan (side dishes, such as kimchi, spicy cucumber and bean sprouts) to snack on, which you can ask to be refilled; then you just roll them up, with the grilled meat, in a big, crisp lettuce or perilla leaf. Cook your unmarinated meat first so the hotplate doesn’t get too crusty with burnt sauces, although staff are happy to switch in a new one when it invariably does.
If you’ve been to a Korean barbecue before, I can tell you that Hongdae Pocha has one of the best beef selections around. Highlights include, but are not limited to, ribbons of brisket with a light soy glaze; highly marbled bavette; juicy short-rib; and full-blood wagyu jebi churi (neck fillet) that’s lean but rich and delicious with rice and kimchi. From the shorter pork line-up, my pick is the soy- and apple juice-marinated ribs, but choosing K-BBQ meats is like a martini preference or naming a favourite Gibb brother: you do you.
Owner Vuzu Hospitality, which also runs Buttered bakery next door and two-hatted Allta in Surry Hills, isn’t short on ambition and capital, and the non-barbecue dishes are a cut above its competitors. There are standard-issue tteokbokki rice cakes and seaweed rolls, but chef Haeseung Choi also spoons fiery gochujang-red wagyu tartare on crunchy hashbrowns (eat quickly before the base becomes soggy). Chicken is deep-fried whole – old-school, 1970s-Korean-market style – and served with a mustard-soy glaze on one side and spicy-sweet yangnyeom sauce on the other.
In winter, I’ll return for the doenjang jjigae (soybean paste soup) that Choi loads with beef, vegetables and tofu; at summer’s peak, I’ll take an outdoor table and choose the chewy muljjolmyeon noodles in a cold, tangy broth with shredded radish and carrots. Soju, lightly fizzy makgeolli and cans of Korean Cass lager are the right booze choices, but I must note that this is probably the only K-BBQ in the world with Reschs on tap. If you’re of a certain age and lamenting the death of those pub bistros where you could grill your own steak, Hongdae Pocha knows precisely what you want to eat – and drink.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Buzzy (and occasionally loud) barbecue spot full of students and families
Go-to dishes: Gochujang yukhoe on hashbrowns ($18); wagyu brisket with soy glaze ($26); yetnal tongdak whole chicken ($39); gogijib doenjang jjigae ($15); muljjolmyeon noodles ($19)
Drinks: Soju, makgeolli, Korean lager and fruity cocktails (and Reschs)
Cost: About $140 for two, excluding drinks
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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