It’s been a while since I have done much blogging about the places we have eaten. This isn’t because we have stopped eating out, although I for one have been doing so at new places a little less often. It’s more a lack of time and motivation caused by a new job and busy time at work.
There are a few new places near work that have opened in the last few weeks though which behoved us to try. One, Pepper Lunch, will be the subject of an upcoming Bureaucrat post [That'll be a while...I've got too many other posts to write up - Bureaucrat]. Just a couple of shops down is G2 Korean BBQ, the subject of this post.
For those of us who are students or office workers, looking for a cheap but filling lunch, there are a number of options for Korean food around Melbourne Central. These tend to provide some generic meat on rice or bi bim bap for a smidgen under a tenner. G2 seems to be aiming just a little higher than that. No so that it is outside the price of students or non-executive types, but not somewhere you’d go for lunch every day.
On the day we went the bi bim bap was definitely the popular choice for Ruby Grapefruit, Ms No Meat and Snooze. There are a few varieties on offer, with the choices de jour being the tofu, kim chi and beef bolgogi.
BBP has been described to me as the hamburger or hot dog of Korea, the sort of food that taxi drivers wolf down before or during shifts, when they want something quick and tasty. It certainly seems a lot healthier than that, a rice, meat and vegetable dish where the ingredients arrive basically raw or undercooked but continue to cook from the heat of the bowl.
I didn’t try any of the BBP so can’t comment from personal experience, but reactions around the table were positive. Snooze’s kim chi seemed to have more of a spicy kick than she was expecting but still went down well. Ms Grapefruit indicated that the beef was more mince like than the strips of meat that she was expecting, but she still thought it was one of the better ones she had tried. And Ms No Meat’s tofu BBP? Well, it was a bit of a case of I didn’t ask and she didn’t say.
What I decided to go for was a sizzling spicy pork and octopus number. This looked good when it hit the table, particularly the two enormous rice balls which looked a little like seaweed speckled arancini. The pork and octopus could have been a little more tender without being in anyway tough, but those rice balls. Seriously, these were packed with enough flavour to make a great snack just on their own.
Overall
They have obviously put a lot of effort into the interior design and I particularly liked the exposed copper work and the dark coloured tables a chairs, even if it did feel a little cramped when trying to eat. The staff seemed quite new but were trying very hard for which I’d cut them quite a bit of slack...I’d rather have a few hiccups but service with a smile than everything neat and tidy but done by someone who would obviously rather be somewhere else. Overall, new but popular and definitely a worthwhile addition to the area.
Verdict
Food – 7.5
Ambience – 7
Service – 7
Price – 7
Address
301 Elizabeth Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Tel: (03) 9642 3424
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