Walnam Ssam Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

Wal Nam Ssam has occupied a lime green, two-storey building on Belmore’s main drag for the last fourteen years. For the twenty years before that, it was home to a different Korean restaurant. While the walls may be yellowing and the ceiling paint peeling, there’s something charming about sitting in this purpose-built restaurant. To one side, up on a raised plinth, a woman sits elegantly on the floor under a low-lying table. Above her head, a wall-mounted poster offers rolling instructions (only in Korean) for the restaurant’s signature dish: walnamssam ($60/2 people).

Arriving by trolley, it’s an abundant platter of ingredients to wrap up in design-your-own rice paper rolls. It’s all you need for an engaging, fresh feast. Well, a couple of Cass beers ($7/each), won’t go astray. We threw in a seafood jeon ($20) that, while light and mostly shallot, still felt surplus to need. As for wrapping rolls, it’s pretty much impossible to get all the available ingredients into one roll. It’s also a Sisyphean task to separate the perfect avocado slices with chopsticks without destroying them. Beyond that it’s entirely up to you what you team with the thin, lean slices of boiled beef. Red and green capsicum, cucumber, omelette, crab sticks and fish cakes are all cut into tidy batons. The bowl of tinned pineapple felt kind of random but it went well against the spicier version of the two available dipping sauces. Thinly sliced raw mushrooms were surprisingly good. We had fun comparing our roll art: the trick was realising what you put down first ends up on top of the...

Wow this establishment doesn’t even have an obvious english sign which is always a good sign (pardon the pun) as it probably caters to Koreans primarily.

The no frills interior is like one you’d find in a small diner in the suburbs of Korea.

Menus thankfully had English on them. We ordered the goat stew (which I’ve never seen in a Korean restaurant before), spicy squid and some dumplings.

Everything tasted like it was home cooked. The stew was delicious with lots of meat that was very tender. The squid was also very good. Dumplings looked like they were home made.

Prices were decent. Especially the goat stew ($15). I recommend this...

This is my favourite place for korean rice paper rolls. A minimum for 2 people for the rice paper roll set which include beef ($50) and is refillable free of charge if you finish the set (make sure you come here hungry to maximise it haha). The sauce is so good, theres a spicy and non-spicy version so its children friendly. You must try their kimchi soup too. Have tried their dumplings were are very crispy but has basic filling. Every visit is very pleasant the staff is amazingly kind and polite, parking is also easy on the...