"I cannot lie," Kidd admitted, "it's not easy running a bar with a bunch of families living above you. The bar is built right into the base of one of the city's many impersonal office towers, in an otherwise quiet corner of the city. And we signed the contract! After two days of observation, I was the new owner of The Cinder Bar in Songdo!" "In a nutshell, I got given the opportunity, thought it could work, proposed the idea to the wife, got declined a number of times, finally after one last crack, she asked, 'Well, do you think you can do it?', replied, 'Of course!' But in my mind I was like, 'How hard could it be?' (famous last words). For years, the ambitious city project was seen prematurely as a failure, even called a " dystopia " resembling a ghost town with its empty roads and low occupancy rate.īut Kidd, who has been an Incheon resident since 2001, saw opportunity in Songdo, the chance to build a niche in a new urban, global community that would certainly grow. All of Songdo was new, from the streets and buildings to the people that slowly started to populate it and the community they built. It wasn't like other Korean cities that can trace their history back centuries ― nothing had been here before, just tidal flats and seawater. Songdo was envisioned as a futuristic megacity on reclaimed land off Incheon's coast. "I joke that back then, you could pick a lane on that eight-lane main street, lie down for half an hour, and you probably wouldn't have died." "At that time, Songdo was dead ― really dead," Kidd told The Korea Times. Kidd took it over from its first owner, a fellow New Zealander, in December 2014. Songdo International City is said to have officially "opened" in 2009, and The Cinder Bar opened there in early 2013. Warren Kidd runs a bar in a city so new, it isn't even old enough to drink. Go-to dish: Dry-aged steak (market price).Warren Kidd, left, and the staff of The Cinder Bar in Incheon's Songdo International City, May 22. Vibe: Upscale pub meets modern steakhouse. Certainly, the next time my Aussie-meat-loving stepmother comes to town, I know where I'll be taking her. But its crowd-pleasing capabilities make it worthy of destination status: there is surely something for everyone on this menu, from the meat-and-potatoes set to the folks who want their lamb in rib form, smothered in sticky plum and gochujang.įor intergenerational celebrations that encompass a wide variety of tastes, I can think of no better setting. There's nothing about Cinder that's particularly ambitious, other than the audacity of hiding an expensive restaurant in the back of a neighbourhood pub and expecting that people will show up and order a meal that might easily cost as much as that neighbourhood's median weekly rent. If nothing else, the lovely stemware Cinder uses deserves better plonk. With a few exceptions, the selection tends toward industrial-scale producers, and there's very little on the list that might live up to a special-occasion dinner or a pairing with one of the $200-plus steaks. Inside it's all walnut finishes and burnt-orangeaccents, with a view from the front room into the kitchen where a Josper grill – a combined charcoal grill and oven with cult-like status in the world of meatheads – does much of the work, turning out charred vegie appetisers and hefty chunks of meat.Īnd I wish the wine list were as thoughtfully sourced as the meat. This is at least part of the story of Cinder at the Terminus Hotel in Fitzroy North, the historic pub that was taken over about a year ago by Kickon restaurant group, where the food is overseen by Kickon executive chef Jake Furst.Ĭinder is a swanky steakhouse hidden behind a honey-coloured wooden door around the back of the pub. Let us all rejoice in the return of the grand pub dining room and the focus on fantastic steaks that return ought to bring. In fact, the closest we've ever come to a proper steakhouse culture (beyond Hog's Breath) is when pubs used to have grand dining rooms that felt truly fancy, where steak was always the specialty of the house. A good pub steak is almost as easy to find as a bad pub burger, and has been since before burgers were regularly served on pub menus. Or, more accurately, I give thanks to the pub. Westholme wagyu 1kg t-bone, dry-aged for 45 days.
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