Canberra's Chinatown/Asiatown suburb Dickson is lucky enough to have Cantonese, Vietnamese, Malaysia/Singapore, Korea and I'm sure others covered. Apparently they had an Ethiopian place that closed a few months ago (unfortunately) which is actually the main reason for going on this occasion. Nonetheless Korean it was.
As per the custom I discovered in Seoul in December 2008, Korean restaurants like to give a lot of free sides with the meal. Here we were presented with kimchi, beanshoots, grated potato and some sliced sausage & onions.
- Ddeokkochi (deep fried rice cake stick with spicy sweet chilli sauce) - my favourite dish of the lot. Sticks of rice cakes with crisp thin outsides and chewy gummy insides coated by chilli sauce. Fixed a rice cake craving;
- Dolsot-Bibimbap with Beef - stone pot with the usual array of vegetables. It was quite expensive (extra $3 for meat), the rice wasn't crispy on the bottom, I prefer raw egg and the gochujang sauce was very very mild. It was ok, but nothing I'd say was great;
- Haemul-Pajeon (seafood pancake) - a pancake/pizza/doughy concoction with some small squid and shrimp embedded. Again it was ok, but nothing all too great.
Next time I would order rice cakes and more rice cakes (or somehow learn to make them myself). I'd probably stick to a stew for a main as I tend to like Korean kimchi stews and they have a non-kimchi one with rice cakes!
