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The room is warm, homey, bathed in a soft light from the forest outside. I’m sitting at a counter, facing a beautiful kitchen, where chef Jung Eun Chae is fastidiously placing noodles into lovely handmade bowls, before pouring a light broth over them. She places the steaming bowl in front of me, along with a side dish holding two cubes of radish kimchi.

“Chicken noodle soup with egg and kkakdugi,” she says softly, before topping up my cup of ginseng tea from a glass carafe that sits over a small flame on the counter.

The soup is subtle, almost austere – pleasure is derived from its purity and simplicity: the slight chew of the fresh noodles; the warm golden chicken-y clarity of the broth, which gains new dimension when I dip the light chilli tartness of the kimchi into it. “I want to come here the next time I’m sad or sick,” I say to my companion. “This is food that could cure anything.”

Like many Australian food obsessives, I have spent years trying to get into Chae. Each month I dutifully fill out the lottery for any day I might be able to get to Cockatoo, about an hour’s drive from Melbourne. I’ve attempted every tactic – to try for a spot on my own, to try for a reservation for six people, which is the entire restaurant since Chae only seats six people in each of its three weekly seatings. Nothing has ever worked, but it’s not surprising – last year, 7618 people entered the lottery for under 600 potential dining slots, with some of them entering more than 100 times.

Very few dining experiences in the world feel this personal, or engender the kind of quiet reflection that Chae does. 

And I’ll admit that, in the end, I hitched my wagon to a friend who had secured a reservation, and because of that, I have no advice for how to get into this restaurant. There is no magic formula. But after eating there, I can say that I very much understand why the demand is so high. Very few dining experiences in the world feel this personal, or engender the kind of quiet reflection that Chae does.

The format is a relaxed six courses, along with various teas and one cocktail (or mocktail). Chae works constantly and quietly, with the precision of a professional chef and the sincerity of someone welcoming you into her home. I was almost as dazzled by the meticulous organisation of her fridge and the efficiency of her cleaning as I was by the food itself – if I tried to cook even one course for six people, my counters and sink would be a catastrophe, but here everything has its place, everything falls into order.

Plates are organised with that same care. Seop-sanjeok, a small minced chicken patty studded with candied walnut, sits primly next to a pancake made of king oyster mushrooms and shrimp. Rounding out the plate is a slice of zucchini, coated in a delicate egg batter and fried until golden. These are accompanied by cauliflower pickle, and a salad of cabbage and seaweed dressed with house-made sesame oil.

Sauces and ferments are all made in house, an incredible feat when considering the complexities of Korean cooking and its base components. There’s a sense that Chae is intimately enmeshed with her ingredients, having coaxed them to life herself through years of careful fermentation and blending.

Some courses feature many components laid out across various plates but all meant to complement one another, while others are simple, such as the pan-fried cod in a pool of house-made soy sauce, garnished with zesty perilla leaves from Chae’s garden. The final savoury course is jeongol, a beef, mushroom, tofu and kimchi stew, the broth fiery and complex, served with white rice.

It’s entirely possible that certain customers might not understand this restaurant’s appeal. During my visit, two women sat looking confused as Chae served her soup and rice and stews, glancing at one another with a question that implied: what is all the fuss about? Meanwhile, next to me, my friend ate mostly with his eyes closed, sighing in pleasure, savouring the wild, sweet complexity of the gochujang (sweet chilli paste), contemplating the different textures of the various mushrooms in the tofu stew, marvelling at the sweetness and lightly sticky depth of the rice.

The meal served at Chae is meant for this kind of contemplation – nothing about this food is theatrical or steeped in luxury. But there is care in every bite, in the ingredients Chae has grown and meticulously crafted, and the result is startlingly profound, if you’re open to the experience. I doubt I’ll ever get the pleasure of eating here again, given the difficulties in securing a spot. But this one time left me with a feeling of nourishment I will never forget.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.