Korean Charcoal BBQ Restaurant, Mermaid Beach

I've always loved Korean food.  Mr Epi and I used to go for regular dinner dates to a little place in Surfers that did great bulgogi and spicy pork.  We'd often look over at the other tables BBQing up a storm on their hotplates and agree that we had to try the BBQ one day. 
Well we tried BBQ about a year ago and it is now one of our favourite meals to have out.
A Korean work friend of mine recently organised a lunch at Korean Charcoal BBQ Restaurant in Mermaid Beach.  It was good to go with someone who knew what they were doing! Mr Epi and I have received a few laughs in our cooking attempts with hotpot and BBQ. The best was when we were having hotpot.  The hotpot comes with two whole raw eggs that are intended to dip the hotpot meat in before eating. We were oblivious to the intended purpose for the eggs and got a little creative. We decided to crack the eggs into the hotpot and have hotpot poached eggs.  The waitresses were in stitches.
I liked Korean Charcoal BBQ Restaurant so much that I decided to take Mr Epi and Mama Epi. It is located next to Lone Star at Pacific Square along the highway and is easy to find. It doesn't look much from the outside but the interior is warm and very comfortable.  The smell of the place is fantastic and despite not feeling too hungry on arrival, it didn't take long for the aroma to get my appetite going.


We started with a serve of the mandu ($10). 

These delicious pork and vegetable dumplings were lightly panfried and served with a chilli, garlic, vinegar and soy dipping sauce.   

Starter salad and dipping sauces. Left to right: spicy fermented soy bean paste, sesame oil with pepper and a light vinegar.

For our main we chose the Armso-set of BBQ meats.  It was $62 and worth every cent. It is intended to share between three people but could easily cater to four.  It comes with three dipping sauces, starter salad, lettuce leaves to wrap some of the meat in and a small plate of fruit at the end of the meal.  We ordered two rice to share between the three of us.

Starting from the giant pile of cabbage - clockwise: marinated beef, short beef ribs, scotch fillet, ox tongue and brisket in the centre.

I love the side dishes (think they are called banchu) that come with the BBQ.  We had traditional kimchi, white kimchi (both pictured), light pasta salad and a seaweed and white onion salad.  All four were delicious but my pick is always the traditional and white kimchi.  I love that spicy kick!

The ox tongue sizzling away 

The tongue was sliced in thin bite-size pieces that were delicious with the soy bean paste.  I remember being repulsed by tongue as a little girl.  Dad would buy a tongue and my sister and I would poke at the taste buds and declare that we wouldn't eat it if he tried to serve it to us.  I have a feeling he disguised it and served it up to his unsuspecting daughters despite the protests. I've now relaxed a little bit about offal and will eat tongue if I can't see the taste buds!

The service here is very good and there is always someone waiting at the periphery of the restaurant, ready to swoop in if they see you looking a bit perplexed about how to tackle the BBQ.  

T) 5572 5733

Shop 4/2532 Gold Coast Highway
Mermaid Beach, QLD

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Kibi, Shibuya - Tokyo

I could honestly eat Japanese food day in, day out, no complaints.  The general simplicity of ingredients and clean flavours make it one of my favourite cuisines .  I was in foodie heaven on my trip to Tokyo.  Between the cheap ramen stalls, department store foodcourts, top quality convenience store snacks and ma'n'pa eateries, I was never lost for somewhere to eat.
The one meal which will forever remain etched in my memory as a top dining experience was at Kibi, in Shibuya.  This little eatery was tucked down an alleyway opposite Hachiko exit of Shibuya station.  If it hadn't been for our friend who lives locally we would never have found this haven of eating treasures.  The tiny little cobbled  alleyway spans about fifty metres and is home to several Japanese bar/casual restaurants. When I had previously thought of traditional Japanese dining, this setting was very close to what I had imagined. 

The cook at Kibi is a young Japanese woman who I've been told has spent much of her youth traveling around Japan, perfecting her cooking and collecting recipes and techniques on the way.  Our friend described her style of cooking as 'homestyle' Japanese.  The intimacy of this little restaurant meant that we were able to sit right up close to the action, and watch her wield her magic. Kibi is about 2m x 1.5m in space and you sit along a bar which runs along the length of the cooking space.  It seats four people comfortably and a further two to three people can be squeezed in if they stand.  There is further dining space upstairs which I have been told seats about five.

Anyway, enough about the nitty-gritty of the place. Let's get onto the fun stuff: the FOOD!
Several small courses were served.  They increased in size and heft as the meal progressed.

Japanese pepper with sesame.

Preparing Japanese style potato salad.

The finished product.  The salad on the right is the traditional style of Japanese potato salad.  Its flavour is much creamier and less acidic than its European counterpart.  The salad on the left was made with par-boiled potato and pepper, if my memory serves me right.  Both were delicious.

Next up was a marinated Japanese eggplant.  I'm going to hazard a guess and say that the marinade was a mixture of mirin, sesame and miso.  The flavours and textures in this were so delicate and moreish.  I would have loved to learn how to replicate this dish.

Sadly I didn't get a good picture of this dish. It was the winner of the night. 'Scuse the Marlboro's in the background.  The one annoying thing about eating in Japan was the smoking in restaurants! Anywho, this dish was seared bonito on a bed of myoga sprinkled with sesame, mirin (I think?!) and flash fried garlic chips.  Bonito is a Pacific fish that belongs to the mackerel family.  The flesh is dark, tender and deliciously fatty.  It smelt quite pungent when it was being cooked, but it's flavour was much more delicate than it's smell let on.  Myoga is a type of Japanese ginger.  The clean, crisp tang of the myoga was beautiful with the fatty fish.

 The next dish up was the karaage, a Japanese classic that was keenly anticipated by all of us.  The chicken was served on a bed of a crisp and peppery lettuce, which was a nice fresh addition the fried chicken.  Mr Epi was on a karaage comparative tour for our trip, and this one was the winner!

The final treat was a bowl of cold soba.  The soba was in a very bland sauce which had the consistency of egg white.  For all I know, it could have been egg white.  The blandness of this sauce was livened by the addition of spring onion, cherry tomatoes and black sesame seeds.  This dish was quite a challenge to eat.  The slippery coating of the sauce on the already slippery soba meant that you had  to slurp the noodles straight from the bowls.  The chopsticks didn't prove to helpful with this dish!  Mr Epi really struggled with the texture of this dish, but I loved it. 

We dined at Kibi twice during our stay in Tokyo, and would have happily eaten there every other night if it's occupancy had allowed.  Our meal generally cost around 9,000 yen, including a couple of beers each.  It is hard for me to give a street address as the card I got for Kibi didn't feature one, just a little ambiguous map on the back of the card.