The fifth and final stop of our Auckland guided food tour, Gochu is a modern Korean restaurant serving up small plates of reimagined Korean dishes. It is located deep inside the Commercial Bay Shopping Mall.
We had the opportunity to sample two things on their small plates menu: a fried chicken slider and a rice filled cabbage roll (which they likened to Korean ssam). I thought both tasted OK, but wasn't really sure what to make of the Korean influence. Both had the gochujang Korean flavor that is so popular now in mainstream cooking. The chicken seemed like a small piece of normal fried chicken, not nearly crispy or shell-shattering as a really good KFC piece could be. And the second wasn't really ssam, it was a cabbage roll with Korean flavors. Plus it's really a sampling menu, where you are not really going to get enough portions to satisfy someone who is really hungry (e.g. the one chicken slider is NZ$8). read more