160 Nerang Street, Southport
Anyone who's followed this blog at all this year would know that whilst the main cuisine of Brisbane 2014 is Southern American, the main food of Cora 2014 is most definitely Korean. My interest in Korean cuisine has exploded this year and I will never say no to the offer of a Korean meal. While we were staying at the Gold Coast recently, we met up with Blossom and a couple of her friends. She is Korean and knew just the place to take me for Korean BBQ. Best of all, it was all-you-can-eat at a very reasonable price.
After some thinking, I realised that this premise sounded very familiar. It turns out that my highschool friend Bee mentioned her parents owned an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ at the coast and when I inquired, it turned out to be the same place.
Disclaimer: I had a meal at Goha just like a regular diner and was not bribed or coerced to form any particular opinion.
Goha is located in a small shopping complex off Nerang Street. It's a small, unfussy restaurant with the front room containing several islands for food collection, and the back room with tables, chairs and the all important ventilation that stops Korean BBQ restaurants from getting too smokey.
Appetizers to choose from
Once we were seated, a waiter brought out the hot coals to start heating up our hotplate. I've tried a Korean BBQ restaurant that used electric hot plates and must say that I strongly prefer the hot coals. It gives that distinct smokey flavour that an electric hot plate simply can't reproduce.
Variety of meats to cook with
Blossom headed to the self-service island and dished out several plates of appetizers and sauces for us to share. There were ready to eat appetizers, which I started digging into as soon as they were placed on our table because I was starving. I always love the pasta salad at these kinds of places. I feel like a child admitting that but it's so yummy! There was also kim chi (of course), fried dumplings, cucumber salad and lettuce to use as wraps for the meat.
Our first plates of meat
Speaking of the meat, by golly there was a lot of variety. The owners of Goha also own the butcher nearby and I assume it's because of this that the meat they offer in the restaurant is such high quality and varied. Blossom got us a bit of everything to try.
BBQ in progress
After a while I forgot what everything was but it was all so delicious. The marinades were just the right amount of sweet and savoury and were well absorbed into the meat.
Lettuce wrapped marinated meat
I loved the brisket especially because it was so tender. Best of all, we didn't have to worry about how much we ate because there was always more.
Some mussels and prawns in the mix
There were even a few seafood options available. The mussels and prawns were of the frozen variety. I didn't try any of the crab but those who did said it was very tasty.
There's something greatly satisfying and comforting about sharing all-you-can-eat BBQ with a group of friends. It's also reassuring when your group contains 3 hungry males because you know you're not going to run out of food or rack up a ridiculous bill. We stayed at Goha chatting away for a lot longer than we should have because the restaurant started closing down around us. Everyone was so smiley and friendly though and we had a great meal and even better time catching up.
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