[FOOD REVIEW] Red Pepper, Strathfield Sports Club

Ever since I missed out on trying some Korean fried chicken in Melbourne, I've had this constant weird craving to eat Korean a lot. But I guess it couldn't be too bad if it spawned this post, right?

Red Pepper, Strathfield

At first, I was sceptical about this place because I had no idea we were going to eat a sports club. I just saw some tennis courts and was like "Are we really having dinner? Or is this a plot to get me to exercise?" Thankfully, I really did get food. Located at 4A Lyons Street, Strathfield is a sports club with this Korean chicken bistro. Sounds like a place to pig out after some exercise haha! There's parking for customers but it seems to be quite full usually. We were really lucky to be able to snag a spot really quick! Eventually, after getting some seats, we went to the counter and ordered some food. It really resembles an RSL Club with having to show ID and ordering at the counter for your food.

Ever since I ate the seafood pancake at Seoul-ria once upon a time, every time I go to eat Korean food now, I would always look to try their seafood pancakes. This Seafood Pancake with soy sauce ($15) was filled with a whole pack of greens! I can assure you, every bite had shallot in it haha! I honestly didn't mind it but I would've preferred if it had more seafood. I could barely find a few pieces when I was eating. But otherwise, it was very nice and fluffy. Definitely not thick which made me very happy and it was lightly flavoured so you could really taste the texture of the pancake without being overwhelmed by flavours. If you love your shallots, you'd probably like this. Surprisingly, I couldn't really taste the soy sauce.

Wow!! When I laid my eyes upon this, I thought it looked so glossy and good!! From the recommendation of my sis' boyfriend, we ordered the Soy Sauce Chicken (Half $17, Whole $32). Since we wanted another dish of chicken, we got the half. I know soy sauce chicken sounds very undermining and plain but this was really good! Slightly crunchy with a taste of sweet soy sauce and a bit of garlic made this a really pleasant dish. It smelt really fragrant of soy sauce and although it looks quite oily, it didn't taste overly oily. I ended up wishing we got the whole chicken instead though haha! Some of the chicken pieces were a bit on the dry side but I still liked it a lot.

It was a rainy day when we visited and thus, I really wanted to get at least one soup dish. Since we saw a photo of this on the menu, we decided to pick the Sun-Tofu ($14). It's a stew with spicy soft tofu accompanied with seafood and vegetables. There was a good amount of ingredients in this and I would say that this would be best shared between two people. Although, it didn't taste very spicy at first, it got a bit more spicy as I took a few more sips. It was really good though. It had a very good balance between the sourness and spiciness; the tofu and seafood really soaked up this flavour as well. It gave me a bigger appetite for more chicken haha!

Last to appear was the Snow Cheese Chicken (H $18, W $32)! It definitely sounded very interesting but it sadly wasn't my cup of chicken. This was quite cheesy. The outer flakes of cheese combined with the chicken was quite weird to me. The cheese had the texture of Twisties Cheese chips but had more of a sweet touch to it. I had 1-2 pieces and thought that it was enough for me haha. I still think it's worth a try considering how similar the texture is to Twisties though haha!

Overall, I believe I got my dose of Korean here and probably won't be needing to replenish my stomach with Korean Fried Chicken for a while (maybe) but since it is a club, it's best to be reminded that it won't be the most comfortable place ever but it definitely has the nice bustling atmosphere with a lot of people enjoying chicken. Which I really liked. Except, there were limited seats by the time we got there and we had to sit outside and someone was smoking for a bit. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind coming back here to try more of the different types of chicken. They've got at least ten varieties so I kind of feel like exploring through them!