Gangnam Pocha

Mix it cool

Gangnam Pocha opened a couple of months ago on Bourke Street (it’s the restaurant with the cartoon figure who may or may not be PSY) and the interior is a bit strange. I don’t recall what was on the site before, but – judging by the patterned carpet and internal doors with stained glass windows – it might’ve been a pub or RSL.

I had dinner there a couple of weeks ago with Alastair, Haz, and Gaz. Gangnam Pocha’s point of difference from other Korean restaurants (apart from the kpop videos they show on a big screen – videos that don’t match the music piped through the speakers by the way) is that they serve Korean street food as well as other more usual dishes.


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You select dishes individually from the menu, or you can mix and match from the different columns:

A + B for $25
A + C for $29
B + C for $38
or A + B + C for $45

You can also upgrade C to a hot stew for an additional $3.

Confused? It’s easier when there’s a menu in front of you to look at…

Mix it cool 2

Haz and I saw a photo of the drink in the first picture and well – we ordered it just because it looked cool. How could we resist when you get to “mix it cool”?

It’s a bottle of soju plus maehawasoo (a Korean plum liquor) ($26) and yes, it arrives at the table with both bottles stacked together. The two alcohols gradually mix together until each bottle contains the same liquid.

A waiter came back to separate the bottles for us after we did a little cry for help.

And it tasted… ahhh… well it tasted better the more we drank and ate. 🙂 It was worth it for the novelty factor.

Corn cheese

From the menu A choices, we had the corn cheese.

The corn cheese was delicious – the best I’ve had in Melbourne so far. It was so cheesey. Look at it.

Corn cheese

Go on and take another look.

Fried chicken

From part B we had the Gangnam chicken – fried chicken with sweet chilli sauce and peanuts.

I would have loved this if not for the sweet chilli sauce. The chicken was really nice but sweet chilli just makes me eurgh. One day I will banish sweet chilli (and peas) out of existence.

Ricecake

From part C, we had the spicy seafood rice cake which contained mussels, prawns, squid, a boiled egg and rice cake in a spicy broth. There was so much seafood in this – can I complain that there was too much seafood and not enough rice cake? I know that’s a weird complaint, but… rice cake…

Seafood stew

And we also added an additional hot stew – the spicy seafood stew ($28). Actually, this was quite similar to the spicy seafood rice cake. We wouldn’t have ordered both if we had known. (There’s also a US army stew available which contains assorted ham, beef, kimchi, noodles and cheese – interesting)

Gangnam Pocha

I liked Gangnam Pocha and we had a lot of fun that night (pretty sure the “mix it cool” was partly to blame for the giggle fest that Haz and I had). I’d definitely go back for more corn cheese and to try out more of their menu.


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Gangnam Pocha
141 Bourke St
Melbourne VIC 3000
Phone: 03 9078 8882
Web: gangnampocha.com.au

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