Chae Cockatoo restaurant review: New location, same authentic experience

Chae, the in-demand tiny Korean eatery, has moved from its one-bedroom Brunswick apartment to a semirural property — but has it lost its wow-factor?

Chae’s six-seater restaurant may have relocated to Cockatoo but promises the same authentic, intimate experience. Picture: Jason Edwards

Little restaurants are having a big moment in Melbourne.

(And we’re still comfortable paying to eat in strangers’ homes with people we don’t know. Huzza! Britain’s supper club movement ain’t dead yet).

We have Helly Raichura’s small, secretive and MasterChef-famous Enter Via Laundry, which this year moved from her Box Hill home to a covert Carlton North location.

There’s Greasy Zoes in the suburbs (seating eight) and Ballarat’s Underbar is shrinking its 16-seater to 14 when it reopens in a new location.

Perhaps Chae is the most interesting of the lot.

Chef Jung Eun Chae and husband Yoora Yoon’s six-seater eatery was the inner north’s best kept secret when it opened in 2020.

Buchu-kimchi, chive kimchi, is one of the dishes you may try at Chae. Picture: Jason Edwards.

Run out of the couple’s one-bedroom Brunswick apartment, it boasted an intimate experience sharing food and stories from Chae’s upbringing in South Korea’s South Jeolla province.

At one stage, more than 6000 people were on the waitlist.

Then came our mega-lockdown.

Chae and Yoora quit the city life and bought a house in semirural Cockatoo.

Fast forward a year of fighting red tape to run a restaurant at the site, and working out a solution with council, and we have Chae 2.0.

It’s a slightly different feel to Brunswick, reborn as a kitchen garden experience involving tours, cooking demos and tastings.

Yoora and the couple’s loveable black lab Haru are part of the welcoming committee, carefully guiding you down the steep driveway and into the rustic white cottage that’s warmed with a cosy country comfort expected from a house like this.

Dak Gomtang, Korean chicken soup. Picture: Jason Edwards

A flickering fireplace, glass doors that concertina onto a timber deck overlooking a gumtree expanse rustling below – it’s all very wholesome, and we haven’t even started eating.

It’s just her; a masterful one-woman show, working the stove, plating, serving, clearing, cleaning and entertaining the three kitchen-facing tables for two, with the dining room throwing off a weird classroom vibe.

You may start with warming jujube date and artichoke tea, followed by the boozy cheongju (Korean sake) or a nip of sparkling pumpkin makgeolli (rice wine) that has a syrupy mouthfeel and tingly backbeat of vinegar acidity.

Makgeolli takes about two to three weeks to make, and cheongju six months.

Next up is a more familiar sweet potato and rice spring roll which may win you over, dunked in homemade ganjang (soy sauce) which can also be poured over a umami-loaded soup made from tofu broth and sweet prawn meat. It’s no-nonsense cooking that makes perfect sense.

Everything that passes your lips is made from scratch by Chae or her family, including Jeolla-favourite fermented murray salted cod fish eggs made by her mum.

Dongchimi, Radish kimchi. Picture: Jason Edwards

Chae also makes 10 types of kimchi, from musaengchae (radish kimchi salad) that doesn’t require ferment, right up to Chinese cabbage varieties that spend up to several months in the jar.

Kimchi may form part of a procession of plates that follow, including smoky-sweet candied dried anchovies and almond slivers, a lone mussel bobbing in a clear, seawater-like broth and tender beef tresses wok-fried in sesame oil.

Koreans don’t do dessert, she tells us, so Chae whips up a remarkably simple yet flavoursome finisher: sweet-fermented pumpkin and rice punch bobbing with chunks of seasonal fruits. Incredible.

Chae may be a home job, but certainly doesn’t compromise a restaurant-quality experience with next-level attention to detail (hey, even the crockery is warmed in the oven moments before service) and superb kitchen skills.

It’s an authentically simple, intimate experience that’s flavour-packed and loaded with love.

Chae restaurant has just reopened in Cockatoo.

Chae

33 Mountain Rd, Cockatoo

chae.com.au

Open: Fri: 6pm, Sat: 1pm and 6pm, Sun: 1pm.

Try this if you like: Greasy Zoe’s

Cost: $95pp

Rating: 8/10