Over the top? Eccentric?
Noodlies, Sydney food blog doesn’t care. Wagyu House Butcher Korean restaurant is one of a kind and I love it!
It looks like an old motel that’s been bought over by someone with LOTS of dough and an equally abundant amount of imagination.
The Korean owners have turned this into a fantastic little lego-esque fantasy K-town.
The restaurant is surreal; bright plastic chairs, shining slim exhaust pipes – all arranged to Korean exacting precision. The fantasy atmosphere is aided by the empty restaurant – we’re here at 5pm and understandably the place isn’t crowded.
Turn into the artificial green coloured driveway and to your left will be the butchers and to your right, the restaurant. What’s the connection? Well if you’re into meat and Korean BBQ, and let’s face it, who isn’t?! Then you can grab your meat from the butcher and cook it at your table in the restaurant.
But wait, that’s not all. As the menu proudly announces in bi-lingual elegance:
“Wagyu House is traditional premium Korean BBQ restaurant which serves wagyu meat to consumers which is brought by its own farms to give you the best quality. You can see and choose any variety parts of the meat what you would like to buy an grill them on the Korean traditional charcoal.”
Yes, the owners runs two wagyu farms in NSW, the source of their meat.
Very tempting, though sadly for us, not this time. Korean BBQ is perfect for groups and we can’t wait to bring the whole clan. But this visit, we’re ordering the old favs to compare their food with other Korean eateries around town.
The prompt arrival of a selection of 12 banchan sides dishes makes for an impressive start; the kim chi is the right age for noodlies, sour but not sharp, shredded white radish is delicately moreish.
Walter and I politely stay away from pickled garlic.
All three dishes arrive at the same time (the fortune of being early). Walter is in raptures over the soy bean paste soup. And I agree, it’s the best I’ve had in a long, long while; rich, thick and in-your-face. Likewise the chilli chicken is robust and punchy without needing to rely on chilly spiciness. Tonight we go the kim chi pancake which is a head turner. Thick, hearty and very enjoyable, though let down by the crumbly texture and watery side sesame soy sauce.
While meat and K-BBQ are their obvious specialties, other dishes stack up pretty well too. Again, maybe because it’s early and not yet busy, but service is brilliantly attentive in that Korean efficient way.
Maybe it’s the novel, vertically integrated concept of farm to butcher to BBQ, maybe it’s the fantastic decor or maybe it’s just the exhaust from a bumper-to-bumper Parramatta Road, but there’s a surreal aura around Wagyu House Butcher Korean restaurant.
What ever it is, we’ll be back with re-enforcement.
Wagyu House Butcher Korean
668-670 Parramatta Rd, Croydon
(02) 9797 9999
Music credit: “Finding Movement” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.
