Hong Depot - CLOSED

Hong Depot is a little wacky, doesn’t have the best taste in music, and makes you cook your own meals, but that is all part of the fun. I bet $23 that you can’t resist its charm.
Sam Stephenson
December 03, 2012

Overview

Imagine you fell asleep and woke up in some Korean fairytale. You were seated at a table with your own BBQ, there were spiraling extractor fans hanging from the ceiling, K-pop coming through the speakers, crazy ornaments covering the walls, and the people seemed so happy to see you that it could only be a dream.

Sitting in prime position at the entrance to West End, Hong Depot is by day an affordable, quick, delicious, working lunch spot and by night an authentic but fun, Korean BBQ.

Why not grab a sneaky bottle of white wine from the BWS down the road (corkage is only $3). Glass of wine intact, you will need to decide what to eat. At night, there is a set BBQ menu $23-$26 which includes a quite random selection of veggies, a tray of condiments, and meat (we went with chicken), as well as Korean rice balls.

Our trusty waiter made us some handmade rice balls, which he informed us, were the same ‘lucky’ snack given to Korean soldiers before going into battle in World War Two. While many died, every soldier who ate these survived. Despite having doubts as to the extent of truth in the story, the mix of seaweed, herbs, and sticky rice went down a treat, which to be honest is all that we were concerned about at this point in history.

A bucket of burning rocks comes out and is placed inside our BBQ, followed by bowl packed full of marinated Chicken, and a plate of mushrooms, onions, corn, and other vegetables. Now the tricky part, you have to BBQ everything yourself. The first few bits of chicken are automatic casualties of war, as they will almost certainly get burnt. With a little help from our waiter we managed to get the rest cooked perfectly. For $23 we had enough food for two small meals.

Hong Depot is a little wacky, doesn’t have the best taste in music, and makes you cook your own meals, but that is all part of the fun. I bet $23 that you can’t resist its charm.

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