MELBOURNE | SOT Dining opened in April last year, aiming to bring something different to Melbourne’s Korean food scene. It didn’t hit my radar until recently, when I popped in for What’s on Melbourne. What I found impressed me, a place where co-owner and ex-Nobu chef Dowoon Lee is putting a refined touch on casual Korean dining.
The menu is centred around the restaurant’s namesake, sot. Short for gamasot, a sot is a traditional pot that’s commonly used in Korean cuisine. Food is both cooked and served from the sot. They can be made from a variety of materials, with the ones used at SOT being made from steel.
There are six sot on the menu, filled with buttered rice, and your choice of things like steak, saengson (grilled market fish), and haemul (sauteed seafood). The most popular way to enjoy your sot at SOT is as part of a bansang set meal. It gets you a sot of your choice, along with steamed rice, soup, and banchan.
Instead of a sot as your main, you can also choose from a variety of dishes. A few of the options are sogalbi (24 hour slow-cooked marinated beef rib), mulhoe (spicy ceviche in cold gochujang broth), and bibimguksu with yukjeon (spicy cold noodles served with thinly sliced pan-fried beef, and egg). You can also order anything on the menu, a la carte.
If you’re visiting with two or more people, there’s also the option of one of three chef’s tasting menus. Ranging from $45 to $59 per person, they’re a great way to experience the diversity of what SOT has to offer.
Drinks include Korean-inspired cocktails, soju, makgeolli, Korean beer, a compact selection of global wines, sodas and tea.
SOT Dining
98 Bourke Street
Melbourne
Victoria 3000
Australia
Telephone: 0401 704 919
E-mail: n/a
Website
Open
Mon – Sun: 11:30am to 9:30pm