Out for Dinner: CHAE is a hidden Brunswick surprise

In a cruel twist of fate, this review is being published a week after CHAE’s July and August bookings went online. It will be spring before you get the chance to dine at Jung Eun Chae’s six-seat Korean restaurant run from her Brunswick apartment, but put September 1 in your diary. Now.

It’s open Tuesday and Wednesday for lunch ($59 per person) and for dinner Friday and Saturday ($69 per person). Considering Chae spends the rest of the week fermenting produce, air-drying corn and making soybean paste from scratch, it’s a steal – if you can land a seat.

Chae escorts us down the hall to a lift. Residents in gym gear chat loudly while she stands professionally in the corner, apron on and ready for service. In her apartment, three island benches are each set for two. All stovetop burners are alight, and the oven warms local and Korean ceramics. Chae’s shelves are stacked with vinegars, ferments and scobies that look like fluid-preserved specimens. She isn’t licensed but pours thumbs of homemade makgeolli – milky, sparkling rice wine.

Bugak, deep-fried vegetable crisps, are arranged on a plate that looks like a river stone. They’re accompanied by walnut and fig, sticky with fermented rice syrup. Chae doesn’t use refined sugar, which makes the sweetness of the pumpkin porridge with glutinous rice balls that follows all the more impressive. She empties the remnants into our bowls after we empty them.

Barramundi is marinated in yihwaju (Korean rice wine) salt and served in clear mussel broth amped with wasabi. Chopped eye fillet tartare is flavoured with homemade soy and sesame. Purple-tinged rice concealed by edamame beans is served from an earthenware pot, along with beef rib broth and banchan (side dishes). We wrap the rice in kelp sheets with house gochujang (VIPs who eat at CHAE more than two times can buy the fermented chilli paste) and marvel at the sesame character of pickled perilla leaves.

For dessert, Chae shaves ice for patbingsu and covers it with sweetened red beans, rice balls, roasted soybean powder and milk jam. When she finds a house further north, Chae won’t ever serve more than six diners, but she hopes to run kimchi classes with the same vibrancy as passata-making Italian families.

Brunswick address upon booking confirmation

chae.com.au

What’s nearby?

Another one-woman show, Tofu Shoten, is a tiny shop inside Kines cafe in Brunswick where Sava Goten makes tofu and soybean products. There’s soy milk, miso made from leftover tofu pulp, a nutty spread containing vegan butter, kinako (roasted soybean powder), organic maple syrup, and more.

tofushoten.com