Korean BBQ has been something D has been interested in for a long time. We’d dabbled into it at Strathfield once but that didn’t come with the entire experience of being in a smoke filled room that turns turns all your clothes and hair into a walking advert for Korean BBQ.
So off we went to Jonga Jip in Eastwood after finding it featured in the food section of the Sydney Morning Herald. There are two branches within a 50m radius in Eastwood – one on Rowe St and the other on Railway Pde. While the latter has vents above each cook top, reviews pointed to the former as having better food. In any case T could only find the phone number for the Rowe St shop online when booking.
The seating is very cramped – they obviously wanted to fit as many people in there as possible but it’s manageable. A dizzying number of complimentary side dishes take up almost all the space on the table.
We order a meat platter to barbecue. There’s pork and various cuts of beef, as well as some marinated beef ribs. I wasn’t too impressed by the pork, but most of the beef (minus the bits with gristle) was tender and juicy, and the marinated ribs were especially tasty!
The complimentary side dishes come with free refills so we zero’d in our favourite ones: potatos in honey and chilli (left), sweet potato mash (right) and spicy dried fish (not shown).
And my absolute favourite thing about Korean food (after my favourite brown rice roasted green tea) is potato noodles. I love chewy noodles and these were addictively and deliciously chewy. And they stay chewy even after they’ve been sitting for a while after they’ve been cooked, which is something that you don’t get with instant potato noodles.
To finish off, T ordered the ox knee soup, which is an absolute train wreck of a dish choice! It has cartilage from the ox knee, which is rubbery and bland (even with the soy sauce and wasabi provided) and the soup itself? It tastes like a liquefied version of that cartilage, that is to say, it is bland and watery, like plain congee without the texture of rice. We later found out from a snippet on the TV at the restaurant that it’s good for pregnant women and the elderly. I would not recommend.
Jonga Jip is located at 87 Rowe St, Eastwood NSW 2122.