The Mandoo

Cold soup in winter? With risk comes reward. By Freya Herring

A Korean chef recently told me that his fellow countrymen consume icy cold soups in the depths of winter as a sort of temperature regulator. It’s about matching your body temperature with the weather, he said. Which sounds pretty severe, but intriguing. So during a Sydney cold snap, we venture out to Strathfield to find out if cold soup was nice or nasty. Our destination is the Mandoo, just down from Strathfield station. In this little restaurant, which specialises in soup and dumplings (‘mandoo’ means dumplings in Korean), everything is made in-house and from scratch: the noodles, the stocks, the casings, all of it. We order the cold kimchi soup. It comes in a massive bowl piled high with long, thin, chewy noodles surrounded by neon toned, bright red broth – which is so icy-cold that the texture is verging on slushie territory. There’s half a boiled egg, a hefty dollop of spicy gochujang (chilli sauce) and a big heap of housemade kimchi crowning the top. For a Western palate, this is admittedly a bit weird. But it’s actually really good. We find ourselves wanting to sit up straight rather than slump over our food. The heat from the chilli warms you up, while the cold from the broth seems to balance it out. It has to be said, though, that in an Australian summer this might be the perfect dish, it’s that refreshing. But it works in winter, too. The Koreans might be onto something.

The Mandoo 12A The Boulevarde, Strathfield 2135. 02 9701 0949. Daily 9am-11pm.