Oriental Spoon

Location:254 La Trobe St,Melbourne, 3000
Phone: 03 9654 9930
Time:Dinner
Cuisine Type: Korean
Price: Reasonable for korean food (approx $15-$50)




What got dished out:
As with any Korean eatery, they always serve some of these small condiments to share. I've been to places where you have to pay for Kimchi like Yami Yami, however it's free at Oriental Spoon (the kim chi is pictured far left).

I know in the photo it doesn't look like kim chi and frankly it didn't taste like kim chi either. Okay I lie, it did kind of tasted like kim chi but kind of tasting like it is a tad different to actually tasting like kim chi. Sure it was lettuce, sure it had spices all over it but it almost felt like I was eating an imitation of the thing.

I think the kim chi is either OLD or had been sitting out in the open for way too long and it didn't taste fresh which is always disappointing because kim chi is actually quite nice. The other thing is it's not very spicy which is disappointing as well.

The middle dish was spicy radish but it tasted more like spicy apple. I'm not a very big radish fan but what was served on the day wasn't too bad, actually it was that or the bad kim chi.

The bean shoots (far right) was pretty tasty and was the best one out of the 3. It was evident because it was quickly devoured by the people at my table. I don't know how anyone could get the bean shoots wrong, I guess serving old stuff would be the case but had they did. I would have walked out.
Our main dish to share was Beef Bulgogi (I can't remember the price for this). I'm a very big fan of Beef Bulgogi, perhaps over-indulged by the good Korean eateries that I have been to in the past but this one dished out by Oriental Spoon was a joke. The cuts of meat were way to large and thick, and frankly it lacked the taste that Beef Bulgogi is supposed to have. It seemed like the running theme at Oriental Spoon, tasteless Kim Chi, tasteless beef Bulgogi.
I guess it explains why not many tables around us had ordered Beef Bulgogi. I guess that should have been the warning bells for us but sometimes you could be sitting with a bunch of patrons who don't want to eat Beef for whatever reason. Nonetheless this is generally a popular dish at any Korean eatery. I can clearly see why not many people ordered this. Seriously, if this was my first introduction to the dish, I would have completely written it off and cringe each time I had to eat it.

I had mistaken ordered this dish seafood dish thinking it was going to be a hot pot style dish. I can't remember for the life of me what this dish was called. We were too dumbstruck when the dish came out. Not only is it a very large dish but it wasn't what we thought we ordered.
Nonetheless it was seafood, quite tasty, quite spicy and combined a collection of :crab, shrimp, prawns, pippies, calamari, muscle, octopus, bean shoots, carrots and lots of onion.
For $49, they surely didn't go skimp on the seafood that's for sure.

The silly thing about this dish was not giving us a crab cracker to use. As strong as our teeth maybe it's just not going to be strong enough to crack open parts of the shell. Sure they had cracked parts of the crab but not all of it.

My biggest complaint about the dish (and i do apologise for the quality of the photo) was the octopus. No one at my table was daring enough to eat the damn thing because it looked horribly AWFUL. There's nothing wrong with octopus per se, I've eaten them before with other dishes but these ones were pretty large, head still in tact with all 8 tentacles. It just looked disgustingly creepy. I don't know about you but I'm not big fan of having to look at my food that almost looks alive. (perhaps that's why i'm not a fan of fish, especially considering they serve the whole thing on a plate) Needless to say, we played with our food and moved it around from side to side and hid it under the crab shell so it wouldn't stare at us whilst we ate.

My thoughts:
I've walked past Oriental Spoon quite a number of times, several times being knocked back due to the large group I was in (note: it's pointless when you have more than 4 people to try any restaurant without a booking because you either get knocked back or have to wait a very long time for a table).
So when the opportunity came up to try Oriental Spoon I jumped at the chance.
I was taken back by the place, it never occurred to me how large Oriental Spoon is as a venue, I know it's generally very busy (on any given night) but one would assume that the food has to be either very cheap and/or very good to be as busy as they usually are.

Oriental Spoon isn't exactly on the cheap side, it's relatively priced the same as any other Korean eatery serving the same types of food anywhere in Melbourne, it's not exactly the greatest food served. I did encounter a hit and miss with their food: great seafood dish, awful beef bulgogi and kimchi (although a friend assures me that it's usually a lot better), the service was also a hit and miss as well. At times, they were quick and attentive, the moment our condiments ran out, one of the waiters promptly replaced them, another time I had to try to get their attention whilst they stood around as a group and gossiped. That's the one thing I really dislike in any restaurant, when waiter/ress stand around talking and not looking busy. Their job is to service their patrons not stand around to talk.

I'm a tad reserved about Oriental Spoon, I'm not quite sure where it stands, it's not great but it's not terribly bad either. I guess it's a place that I'll have to go again with more friends (bookings at least) to try more of the dishes, plus I hear their korean bbq is meant to be good. I hope I get an opportunity to try this sometime. I'll let you know how I go