On a wall of Yeodongsik is a framed board with 11 dishes, printed in Korean – this is the restaurant’s entire menu. It’s written in Korean because, for most of the restaurant’s short life, the diners have been the same Korean customers who ordered deliveries of haejang-guk (which loosely translates to “hangover soup”, although it is not eaten just for its morning-after-curing properties) during lockdown from owner Justin Shin’s Instagram account. Yeodongsik in Lidcombe in Sydney’s west, is Shin’s first restaurant.
Yeodongsik’s brief menu isn’t the norm. In Sydney, it is common for Korean restaurants (and migrant-run restaurants generally) to have long menus that cater to a community with many requests, and a broader audience who might not be familiar with the cuisine.
