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MELBOURNE | Guksu is a Korean restaurant on Swanston Street that specialises in guksu, gimbap, and jeon. The interior is bright and modern, and fast service means that once you’ve decided what to order, it doesn’t take long for the food to arrive.
Guksu, the dish not the restaurant, refers to Korean noodles or noodle dishes. At the restaurant you’ll find six different noodle dishes. I recommend the signature myeong-dong noodle soup. It’s a 12 hour chicken and beef broth kal-guksu (Korean hand cut noodle soup) filled with house made noodles, minced garlic pork, pork and tofu dumplings, and garlic kimchi. It’s very light and fragrant. The yukgaejang spicy beef noodle soup is also worth trying. It contains pulled beef, in a sweet and spicy broth. The soup, which isn’t actually that spicy, is served with noodles, kimchi, and rice, which you add to to broth as you like.
You definitely have to order some gimbap when you’re here too. Gimbap is a Korean dish made from bap (cooked rice) and other ingredients that are rolled in gim (dried sheets of seaweed), and served in bite-sized slices. It’s similar, but not the same, as sushi. There are two main differences between sushi and gimbap. Whereas sushi commonly uses raw seafood as a filling, gimbap is filled with things like danmuji (yellow pickled radish), ham, beef, imitation crab meat, egg strips, kimchi, bulgogi, spinach, carrot, burdock root, cucumber, canned tuna, and kkaennip (perilla leaves).
The second difference is the use of sesame oil to season the rice of gimbap, as opposed to the vinegar used for sushi. Guksu offers a few different types of gimbap. I opted for the one filled with spicy stir fried pork, fish cake, pickled radish, egg, carrot, cucumber, and burdock root. Light and full of flavour.
Finally there’s Jeon – Korean pancakes made with egg batter, wheat flour, rice flour, scallions, and other ingredients. I opted for the assorted jeon, which gives you a bit of everything. In this case, green chilli, basa fillet, pork pancake, zucchini, sesame leaf, beef & fishcake skewers, tofu, and sausage (aka luncheon meat/Spam). It’s served with a tasty dipping sauce and is all quite tasty, apart from the Spam – I just can’t get into it but I know it’s popular in Korea.
For drinks, it’s a selection of Korean soft drinks, soju, beer, and a few other things.
Guksu
249 Swanston Street
Melbourne
Victoria 3000
Australia
Telephone: (03) 9639 5570
E-mail: [email protected]
Website
Open
Mon – Sun: 11:00am to 9:00pm