BEBU, CBD

Looking for some tasty Korean tapas as well as street food, we checked out BEBU for dinner. We had previously gone past it on the way to Wonderbao and were intrigued by classy interior and the menu.

The staff were friendly and spoke good Korean as you’d expect and I assume that their English is good also.

We ordered two dishes from the ‘Signature Tapas’ menu, the first of which being the Salmon Tartare with Salad, Gochujang Vinaigrette & Seaweed Cracker ($13.90). The salmon was fresh and melted in your mouth and was a perfect contrast to the super crunchy seaweed cracker. The sweet and spicy gochujang (fermented chilli paste) gave it some well-needed kick.

Salmon Tartare with Salad, Gochujang Vinaigrette & Seaweed Cracker

The second was the Soy Garlic Korean Fried Chicken ($13.90). This was easily the stand-out dish. The meat was tender, the skin was crispy and the sauce was sweet and tangy. Just thinking about it makes me salivate… It was really well-executed and you simply must try it if you come here.

Soy Garlic Korean Fried Chicken

While you can add more tapas to make a set menu (3 ‘smaller’ plus 1 ‘larger’ for $59, a pretty good deal), we wanted to try the more traditional street food. So we ordered the Tteokbokki ($8.50), which is rice cakes and fishcakes cooked in gochujang sauce. The ricecake had a nice chewy texture and sauce was thick, but not as spicy as I would have liked (this is probably because I have had Korean food for most of my life :P). I think most people would find it to be a good level of spice though.

Tteokbokki

We also ordered the Gimmari (4pc, $5.80), which are deep-fried seaweed rolls filled with japchae (sweet potato noodles with various vegetables). In Korea, gimmari are usually sold alongside tteokbokki, intended to be dipped in the tteokbokki sauce. On their own, they were quite crunchy but not really outstanding. Once dipped, however, they were amazing.

Gimmari

All the dishes seemed to be rather sweet - not at all sickening, but definitely noticeable. Nevertheless, we had to try the Hotteok, which is another popular street food in Korea, especially in winter. It’s basically a sweet doughnut made with rice flour filled with molten sugar and nuts. BEBU’s version was very satisfying: it was doughy and had a strong cinnamon and peanut flavour. However, the filling could have been more runny and at $4.20 each, a bit overpriced.

Hotteok

Verdict: A trendy restaurant that adds a contemporary touch to Korean food and also serves up the classics, both to an equally high standard.

Food: 9.5

Service: 10

Atmosphere: 9.5

Value: 8.5

Would I come back? Yes!