Eat. @ Towoo

603 Whitehorse Rd, Surrey Hills ph (03) 9836 0445

I love that my "Gym Girls" friends love food from all over the world, our latest feast was for Korean at Towoo.  I think most of the good Korean restaurants tend to be around the CBD and the Carnegie area, (except for Meega!) I was extremely keen to see whether this would be a good place for Korean food nearer to home.

We started off with a pot of maguli ($14).  It was the first time I've tried it! 

It went very well with a plate of lotus root chips ($8).

We started with an order of Korean Seafood Pancake ($19).  It's a little pricier than the ones I'm used to but is reasonably justified since it's also a much bigger serve than I'm used to!  Lots of chunky pieces of seafood in a crispy pancake.

Next up a Kim Chi Stew ($18 medium, $38 large).  A hot bubbly pot of spiciness that went very well with a bowl of rice.

The Seafood tteokbokki ($18) was also delicious, a mix of seafood, rice cakes, fishcakes and vegies in the traditional Korean sauce.  Quite filling, and who could say no to this covered with cheese?

The side dishes (balchan) were excellent here, and we were especially taken with the white (potato?) noodle salad which had an interesting crunchy texture (top left in photo below).

We also wanted to do the Korean BBQ and ordered a Toowoo Pork Set ($72).  

Each set comes with mixed entrees.  They gave us 2 serves of these as there were 4 of us, and included more lotus root chips, KFC (Korean Fried Chicken), deep fried prawn and crab claws.

The Pork set has pork marinated in 6 different flavours.  It's not easy to make raw meat look pretty but this dish was very colourful and actually looked very artistic!

Our waiter started off the cooking for us, we weren't sure whether we were to continue to do so ourselves or not but he was ultra busy so we did the rest of the cooking ourselves.  The pork was delicious (as long as we didn't get too busy chatting and burn it!)  and it was lovely to try each of the different style of marinated pork. 

The set also includes a garden salad which they had forgotten to bring for us.  We ummed and ahhhed about whether to ask for it as we were already quite full but were really glad we did as it was delicious and quite refreshing given all the heavier fried food and barbecued meat.

We obviously got our second wind as we decided to have dessert as well.  They only had black sesame or green tea ice-cream on their dessert menu ($8 each) so we ended up getting a serve of each to share.  The ice-cream was quite nice, especially the black sesame one.  We found it amusing that they were served on a bed of crunchy nut cereal and drizzled with condensed milk but actually tasted quite yummy.

Another fun night out with the girls, and we had a great time out at Towoo.  Food was both delicious and authentic.  Booking is a must especially on the weekend as the restaurant seems to be getting popular with the locals.  I would definitely have to bring Hubby and the kids back again soon!