The traditional set at Suyu Gisa Sikdang comes with eight banchan paired with your choice of main dish. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
The best thing about Korean food isn’t the barbecue, the bibimbap, or the bulgogi. It’s the banchan. A simple word that encompasses a whole universe of side dishes, from fermented to fresh, spicy to salty, with regional variations and seasonal ingredients: you could fall down a banchan rabbit hole for a long time without ever getting tired.
And there’s a restaurant in Canberra where banchan is the name of the game. Suyu Gisa Sikdang in Tuggeranong serves up a dizzying array of banchan with every meal. I visited with a friend to get our fill of sides.
The menu is long, but we immediately decided on the traditional set, which comes with rice, soup, eight banchan dishes, and a main dish of your choice. I picked the jeyuk pork with rice cakes and gochujang chilli, and my friend went with beef bulgogi.
The banchan included classic wombok kimchi, japchae glass noodles, sliced fish cake, omelette, and some kind of small beef dumpling.
I’d assumed we would receive the same banchan dishes, but the sides had been chosen to complement each dish: my spicy main meal had been paired with fresher options like pickled cucumber and wilted spinach with sesame seeds. My friend’s soy-based bulgogi had a few spicier sides like pickled radishes.
All dishes, including the banchan, are made from scratch by the kitchen, and chatting to the staff, I was told that they regularly change what’s on offer, based on what ingredients they have on hand and what they’ve made that day. So each time you visit, there will likely be something new to try.
The main dishes were delicious: the pork was richly caramelised with exactly the right hit of spice. Taking a bite of pork and rice, then dipping into the sides meant that I was never overwhelmed by the dish and had lots of variety in texture and flavour.
This unassuming restaurant is opposite Tuggeranong’s South.Point Centre is well worth visiting. Photo: Lucy Ridge.
Because we’re nosy diners, we also peered around the room to see what others were eating. One table near us had ordered some tasty-looking fried chicken, and our neighbouring table had ordered a large dish to share, which was served in a wide pan and placed on a cooktop cleverly integrated into the surface of each table to cook.
Typical of what you’d see in Korea, the tables also have hidden drawers built into the sides for cutlery, metal chopsticks and napkins (no clutter on the table). The chairs are also a Korean classic, with hidden storage under the seats for your bag and coat.
Once the neighbouring table had eaten around half of their dish, they waved over a staff member who then added rice to the hotplate to make crispy fried rice with seaweed, imbued with the flavours of their dish.
Partway through the meal, a staff member asked if we’d like any of our banchan refilled: I was tempted to have more kimchi, but could already see I would struggle to finish what was already on the plate! At $33, it felt like outrageously good value for the amount of food on the plate.
My friend commented partway through the meal: “You know a restaurant is good when you haven’t even finished eating, but you’re already planning your next visit.”
I think that just about sums it up.
Suyu Gisa Sikdang is located at Shop 17/191 Anketell St, Greenway. They are open from 11 am until 9 pm Tuesday to Sunday (until 10 on Friday and Saturday). Follow Suyu Gisa Sikdang on Instagram.
Original Article published by Lucy Ridge on Region Canberra.
