Seven StarPocha

Pocha is Korea's late-night idiom, the tented street bar where drinking and eating blur, and this Little Lonsdale Street room translates it for the CBD after dark. The register is loud, communal and built for sharing, the menu sprawling across most of the Korean canon rather than specialising. The dish to anchor a table is army stew, budae jjigae, the Korean-American hybrid born of postwar scarcity: spam, sausage, baked beans and a slice of melting cheese bobbing in a fierce kimchi broth, kept bubbling on a burner as you eat. Around it circle the crowd-pleasers, Korean fried chicken lacquered and crackling, tteokbokki in its sweet-hot sauce, barbecue for the table that wants to grill, beef tartare and even raw marinated crab for the more adventurous. Soju does the rest, poured green-bottle by green-bottle as the night stretches. The fit-out leans into the theme, bustling and a little theatrical, and the kitchen runs late, which is the point, food for the hours when most rooms have closed. Bring a group, order more than seems sensible, and let the stew simmer down while the bottles pile up. Everyday Korean comfort, turned up loud.