Throw me a pity party because oh! I’m Sick! A tickle in the throat and a couple of aberrant sneezes have morphed into a head clogging, eye watering, chest gunking, throat hacking illness – and I, in turn, have turned into a sad, helpless little thing that looks at stairs as if they were the Himalayas.

I am a pitiful patient, and doubly so as my once rich and varied diet is reduced to the sum of congee and soup.

So to cheer myself up, I took a squiz at some pictures of one of my favourite things to do. And that thing involves dinner.

Dinner involving Kimchee stew.

It has been a while since I last ate with the ones that I have fondly dubbed “the favourites”. And no wonder really, as both SuperDanny and Miss Shiny’s careers took off with a flying start.

So when I finally get to sit down for a Friday Dinner with the two of them (sadly sans the Mak-attack), it feels like coming home.

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing (“Shall we TonTon?” “Nah, I did that for lunch.” “I want dumplings.” “I’m not walking to SeaBay. Nuh-uh.”) we settle on Korean.

Han Cook Korean Restaurant sits hidden in the back of a little arcade off Pitt Street. I bet you’ve walked past it tens of times without knowing it was even there. But if you peer past the staircase and the pillar filled with signs that sit between the $2 shop and the cheap CD place, you’ll spot it. A little beacon of light in a dingy corner.

The banchan is tasty here. Six dishes of kimchee, vegetables, potato and other assorted goodies. Better still, they’re kept in a temperature controlled unit instead of the typical giant-plastic-bucket-stashed-under-the-counter.

In between the “What’s new with you? Where on earth have you been?!” that is being thrown around the table, we decide on two things. Dumplings first, and solely because we had lured Miss Shiny out to dinner with the promise of dumplings.

These are oh-so-crispy and (as with all meals here) strangely large. About the size of a ladyfinger banana.

The filling is nothing spectacular, but it is comforting and familiar, and well received by all.

But it is the stew that has caught my eye (and, indeed, captured my heart). It brought to the table with a flourish and set atop a butane gas burner to bubble away. A miasmic melee of sour and hot kimchee with chewy, starchy rice cakes and a whole egg cracked into the middle. A bounty for a cold night.

I am enamoured.

It is also giant. And by giant I’m talking a 30cm round cast iron pot with a decent depth to it.

We scoop and chew and “Oh! Spicy!” and chat and scoop and slurp and gabber and giggle until it is all gone.

(And oh! In my present pathetic state, a big bowl of this stew is just about all I can think about… )

Han Cook Korean Restaurant
238-242 Pitt St
Sydney NSW 2000
(in between the $2 shop & the cheap CD place)
ph (02) 9267 6500

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