Sun & Moon Eatery review: High-quality Korean fare in the heart of Launceston
It is an Asian cuisine that has previously been unable to gain a toehold in Tasmania’s North – yet for the past 10 months, Korean food bursting with authenticity has been delivered via this charming little restaurant, writes ALEX TREACY
Food and Wine
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I love Korean cuisine – and I’m not just talking about its most common incarnation in Australia, the Korean barbecue, as fun as it is to grill your own meat in a dimly lit restaurant while sipping soju.
In my native Brisbane, good-quality Korean restaurants are a dime a dozen, especially on the southside around Sunnybank, which is where I learnt to love a cuisine that retains its unfamiliarity to Western palates.
What do I mean by that? Japanese, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese – these are all food cultures that have penetrated deeply into the Australian psyche (Sydney-based federal MPs, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, recently caused a social media stir trying to outdo one another for the title of the electorate with the best crispy pork banh mi).
These cuisines are delicious, but they also hold little mystery anymore. They are comforting, familiar.
Korean food, however, remains an unconquered frontier: bibimbap, bulgogi, kimchi-jjigae, jjajangmyeon, tangsuyuk – even the names of dishes, full of consonant combinations rare in English, hint at the fact these come from a world exotic to Australia.
Up until now, Korean has been a cuisine rarely sighted in Tasmania’s North, although there is a thriving ecosystem of Korean restaurants in Hobart and the South-East.
That changed last December with the opening of Sun & Moon Eatery in Launceston’s Tatler Arcade precinct.
Sun & Moon is the brainchild of Seoul-born hospitality gun Chul ‘Charlie’ Kim, who moved to Sydney for a working holiday in the mid-2010s and decided to stay on, spending half a decade running functions at Shangri-La Sydney.
He met his wife Tanya while working at Cradle Mountain Hotel and the pair set down roots in Launceston when Tanya became head chef at renowned Charles St eatery Monsoon, which she now owns.
“We learnt from Monsoon that people enjoy a cosy environment, not too fancy, not too casual. We try to make it comfortable for everyone,” Mr Kim says.
It’s a credo borne out in Sun & Moon, which seats about 30 and is adorned with greenery such as bonsai trees and lucky bamboo, and shelves groaning with knick-knacks, while waiters including Mr Kim potter about unobtrusively yet diligently.
Much like the food of Korea itself, Mr Kim’s menu nods to other Asian influences, including Thai, Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese.
So, in addition to classic Korean dishes such as ddeok bokki, bibimbap and bulgogi, diners also have the choice of Thai yellow curry, Sichuan spicy pork mapo tofu, Taiwanese fried rice and Japanese miso stir fry, to name a few.
We order three entrees to share: Tasmanian grilled octopus, brushed with Korean spicy sauce ($16), crispy king oyster mushroom ($14) and Korean kimchi pancake ($15).
The pancake is unbelievably crispy – running a knife atop its exterior is like scraping toast – yet its inside is fluffy and light, like mashed potato, while the kimchi locked inside bursts with umami flavour.
The presentation for the octopus is achingly beautiful – charred tendrils lazily flop across the plate, deep red from the Korean marinade, while a vibrant salad sits beside tiny buttons of Kewpie mayo. It is delicious.
For our mains, we settle on sharing two dishes: ddeok bokki, chewy rice cakes and spongy fish cakes in chilli sauce, served with deep fried gyozas and seaweed rolls ($25); and jap chae, sweet potato noodles stir-fried with vegetables and pork shoulder ($26).
Ddeok bokki – sometimes written as tteokbokki in English – is one of Korea’s most popular street foods. While every family has its own recipe, the key ingredients are tubular, chewy rice cakes, soft and fluffy fish cakes, and chilli sauce made with big dollops of that vital Korean ingredient, gochujang, a fermented chilli paste bursting with sweet, hot and smoky flavours.
Sun & Moon’s version comes heaped with crisp shredded cabbage, while there is also an option to have the dish served with molten, melted cheese.
The umami flavours are intense – the chilli sauce, thick and glossy, coats the cakes, absorbing into their skin. It is so filling and savoury, we can only get through half the bowl.
The freshness and lightness of the jap chae is a pleasing contrast to the ddeok bokki. It is bursting with vegetables: cabbage, broccoli, mushrooms, carrot, zucchini and capsicum.
The dish is given substance by the sweet potato glass noodles, slippery little strings that carry subtle flavours of soy, sesame and white pepper, and the chewy strips of pork shoulder mixed in throughout.
It is one of the great joys of multicultural Australia that we have at the tip of our tongues such culinary variety. For residents of and travellers to Tasmania’s North, another puzzle piece has been slotted into place.
SUN & MOON
4/74-82 St John St, Launceston
Opening hours: Tuesday, 11am-2pm; 5pm; 8.45pm; Wednesday to Saturday, 11am-2pm; 5pm; 9pm.
On the menu
Tasmanian grilled octopus $16, Korean kimchi pancake $15, Crispy king oyster mushrooms $14, Ddeok bokki with deep-fried gyozas and seaweed rolls $25 (add melted cheese $2), Jap chae with pork shoulder $26.
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