Dinner at Goshen

Goshen
189 Smith Street, Fitzroy (map)
9419 6750

A few weeks ago, on our way to the Westgarth cinema, I went with K and B to Goshen, on Smith Street. Goshen is my favourite Korean restaurant in Melbourne! I love the cute interior (the grassy green-painted walls are dotted with little stenciled purple butterflies flitting about), the staff are sweet, the prices are very reasonable and the food has a nice fiery kick to it. The spicy dishes can mostly be ordered mild - but be warned, spicy really does mean spicy at this establishment...

Apologies for the dark photos of the food!

The three of us shared two entrees and three mains. We started with the meat dumplings (above), which were slightly gingery and contained veggies as well. We also had the entree that K and I really love at Goshen, the fried tofu (below), which is always deliciously crispy on the outside and silky soft on the inside, served with a light sweetish soy sauce.

The seafood pancake arrived served on a hot stone plate. There was a good range of seafood on the pancake - I say 'on' because the relative thinness of the pancake and chunkiness of the seafood makes it more like a pizza than a pancake. This was the least spicy of the mains.

Next came the job chea, which was for me the most unusual of the dishes - beef, mushrooms, mixed vegetables and soy sauce served over sweet potato noodles. The translucent sweet potato noodles had a really interesting texture and tasted sweeter (well, duh!) than other cellophane noodles I've had. This dish is delicious but pretty fiery - maybe next time we'll ask for it mild...

We ended with the chicken bibimbap (spelled bi-bim-bob in their menu). When I visited San Francisco in January I found that bibimbap seems to be an enormously popular dish over there, much more common than it is here. I love the marinade on the meat, and the way that towards the end of the dish you can scrape up the half-burnt bits of rice that have stuck to the stone hot plate. Crunchy goodness!