The best Korean restaurants in Sydney you should be booking

So anyone who’s dined at Hansang will tell you this: Get the beef-bone stew. It’s a cream-coloured broth with the texture, aroma and depth of flavour you’d expect from something that’s simmered in a cauldron for 72 hours. It’s seriously one of the best soups in Sydney, but there is so much more Hansang has to offer. The loud, beerhall-like venue has a long menu traversing meaty drinking snacks, hot pots and simple home-style stews. Then there’s the fact the banchan, all eight to ten of them, are some of the best in Sydney. 

In 2018, husband and wife Daero Lee and Illa Kim opened up a 30-seat restaurant in Surry Hills, wanting to bring a contemporary spin to classic Korean dishes. Since then, Soul Dining has achieved that and more, cementing itself as one of the leading Korean restaurants in town. At the end of 2023, the duo wanted to expand. So, they packed up ship and moved their modern Seoul diner to Wynyard in Sydney’s CBD. And while the new space is bigger, the great food remains. The prawn tteokbokki is a must order. Inspired by the street food dish, Soul Dining’s version includes an capsicum sambal, ’nduja and chunks of sweet Yamba prawn meat studded throughout, taking the humble plate to another level.

Pu Ji Mi is a hidden gem in Eastwood mall with the most loyal local following. When it comes to home-style food, the talk of the town is that Pu Ji Mi does it best. Everything is made in-house and a lot by hand. The showpieces are jok bal and bo ssam, two famously booze-friendly pork dishes (trotters and belly, respectively) served with an arrangement of fresh greens and powerful condiments, both of which you use to make a spicy, punchy, lardy wrap.

The latest venture from the excellent Bentley Group (also Monopole, Bentley, and Yellow), King Clarence isn't strictly Korean, but the food is inspired by the flavors of Korea, China, and Japan, so it makes the cut. To nail this, co-owners Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt persuaded top chef Khanh Nguyen to take charge. The restaurant is fun and upbeat, and Nguyen's food is delicious. Must-order: the wood-roasted pork belly ssam. A huge platter arrives holding slices of pork belly – the crackling all bronzed and bubbly – with an assortment of perilla, lettuce, radicchio, and witlof leaves, and small bowls of kimchi, confit garlic, creamy oyster sauce, and chili sauce. It’s a flavor and texture explosion.

Every drinking culture has hangover cures. In Korea, it’s haejanggook, a term that translates to ‘hangover soup’. Ymone Haejanggook is the best place in Sydney to get a decent haejanggook at an actual breakfast hour. But if you’re in at night, even better. You can start the whole cycle over again with a hot pot, a sizzling plate of spicy intestines and a few bottles of soju.

Matkim is a tiny Korean omakase restaurant, welcoming just eight guests a night to sit down and enjoy 18 courses of innovative Korean cuisine. Decked out in charcoal, the dark and moody spot features an open kitchen, so diners can take a seat at the chef's table and watch the action up close. The team is headed up by executive chef Jacob Lee (ex-Kobo, Soot, Tokki), who has drawn on his heritage in Korea’s Jeolla province, as well as his grandmother’s cooking to craft the technique-driven and fire-powered menu. If you're keen to experience impressive Korean dishes and pick your jaw off the floor, Matkim delivers.

Soot is not your average Korean barbecue or steakhouse. It sets a new standard for Korean fine dining in Sydney, with cuts you won’t find at any backstreet K-BBQ. Wagyu is the star of the show at Soot, and nothing on the menu is below MBS 7+ (that’s a pretty huge deal in terms of Wagyu beef grading and marble scoring). The other special thing about this Korean barbecue is that each table is fitted with a smokeless and odourless DIY charcoal grill for you to cook your meats and sides. In fact, the name 'Soot' pays homage to the traditional Korean wood charcoal used in the grills, which burns purely and cleanly. The smoke is extracted beneath the table – as opposed to there being an exhaust hood above your table.

You won’t be able to find a website for Kood. That’s because the Korean tea café and kitchen doesn’t have one. Or a phone number, for that matter. Instagram? Forget about it. What you will find, though, if you happen to stroll past 414 Elizabeth Street around lunchtime, is a line nearly snacking out the door. Hungry workers waiting to be served by a smiling Korean lady working out of a teapot-sized kitchen. There's no menu either, but you can't go wrong with a selection of traditional dishes that will set you back $16.50.

The Mandoo is an authentic hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Think less than 20 seats (all of them fighting for what space they have), a tiny menu of dumplings and noodles, and an oddly serene open kitchen demonstrating the art of shaping dumplings and pulling noodles by hand. The dumplings are massive, silky and filled to the max (often with pork, potentially with kimchi, too) while the noodles are either plunged into ice and topped with kimchi and egg, or served in a delicious beef-bone or seafood broth.

Expect Seoul food with a side of funk at Funda, a modern Korean restaurant by the Firestone team. Located on Pitt Street, Funda is a 120-seat venue with Y2K vibes serving remixes of traditional Korean food with modern European touches. That looks like Korean potato pancakes with bulgogi (Korean barbecue beef) and parmesan cheese; grilled leek with stracciatella cheese, pistachio, chilli relish, and soy sauce; and calamari with soy pickled seaweed, seaweed crumble, celery, and mustard cress. At Funda, it's all a bit of fun, and we're down with that.

If we’re talking numbers, Time Out’s top pick for the best banchan in Sydney is Myeong Dong. The most we’ve seen is 14, remarkable considering they’re all made in house. We’ve seen soy-marinated perilla leaves, cured octopus, fish cakes, local lotus root, pickled zucchini, chestnut jelly, semi-sweet soy-dressed potatoes and many, many kinds of kimchi. If you’re in for an endless stream of side dishes that make the rest of the menu feel like a side quest, head over to Myeong Dong.

Sydney has a heap of anju restaurants serving Korean bar snacks designed to fortify you for a night on the tiles. Seoul BBQ is the next level up. Expect the same cheese-lathered, spice-smothered dishes you’ll find at other anju joints, but here they shave a few dollars from the price tag. Even better, if you order a drink, almost everything on the menu is less than $15. 

Biwon is our favourite iteration of Sydney’s Korean-Chinese eateries. Like the Korean-Chinese canon generally, Biwon’s charm is its unfussiness – servings are massive, good value and accessible. The restaurant is loud and often crowded, so be prepared to get shafted to the top floor where you need to order through an actual intercom. However you request it, the jajangmyeon (black bean noodle) and tangsuyuk (battered sweet-and-sour pork) both make it well worth visiting this hidden diner. 

The banchan at 678 will land at lightening speed on your table as soon as you take a seat. All the staff in the vast, wood-lined space will rush about faster than you can catch them. When you do, though, order the pork belly and the marinated boneless short rib for your tabletop barbecue. You’ll definitely be visiting 678 again. 

At Danjee, the restaurant is split across two adjoining spaces: one dedicated to Korean barbecue complete with hotplates are built into the tables, and the other to the likes of bo ssam, salads, noodles and rice dishes. If you go straight to barbecue (understandably), do not pass go without ordering the soy-marinated beef intercostals. You’ll get your hotplate, half an onion and a big pair of scissors for snipping the musky, rich meat.

When we visit good Korean fried chicken restaurants in Sydney, we usually leave feeling satisfied. They deliver juicy, crunchy, battered chooks and maybe some decent pickles, too. But that’s about it. Red Pepper is one of the few exceptions. Once you’ve visited, we know you’ll agree with us on this one: the fried chicken is the best of its kind in Sydney. It’s super juicy, generously seasoned with all the spicy, garlicky saucy flavours without being drenched, and coated in a medium-thick batter that hits the spot perfectly. 

Sunday Seoul was the name of a popular Korean magazine that was in its heyday back in the 1970s. It’s also the name of a retro Korean bar and restaurant in Sydney by a husband and wife duo, Jiyoung ‘Victoria’ and Andy Han. As well as co-owner, Andy is the head chef at Sunday Seoul. One of his signature dishes is the spicy tomato mussel stew with squid in a tomato sauce – and you can add pasta for an Italian twist. Warm your soul with a gochujang-based soup with sliced beef and udon noodles; and try the minari pancake with dried shrimp. Made with the Korean herb, the pancake is golden and crisp with a rich umami flavour.

Jang Ta Bal was open long before Korean barbecue exploded in Sydney, so it's been one of the most popular joints since the very beginning. It offers extremely good-quality meats and has a good-time vibe that’s akin to a well-sauced house party.