Mrs Kim's Grill

Globally, grilling food is about sharing food. But within the broad world of barbecue, certain flavours and techniques pin a grill to a particular region. Mrs Kim's Grill is typical Melbourne, Carnegie. It has its roots in Korea, but its menu choices and gleaming subway-style design place it here, now.

The white-tiled walls are hung with industrial cage-lights and lined with tables nattily inlaid with a gas-fuelled grill. Tabletop cooking is classic Korean, though it's traditionally done in a portable hwaro (footed vessel) that's loaded with white-hot charcoal and brought to the table. "I have a three-year-old," says owner Joanne Chang, "I didn't want hot coals being carried around the place.

"I didn't want ugly drop-down vents either: they can mean you're eating with a pole in your face." So, staff open the street-front bifolds and back door for through ventilation, and the high ceilings are fitted with bright-yellow, double-engine air ducts. Smoke doesn't seem to be a problem. The lack of leg-room under the table (the grill pit takes space) can be though.

Barbecue sets are for two people, there's: Oink, Baa, Cluck and the Moo - which includes skirt steak and the speciality kalbi ribs. Unlike American racks, Korean-style ribs are filleted out. It's just the long strip of meat, which is then marinated - in kiwifruit (to tenderise) and soy-based sauce - for 24 hours. It's unfurled onto the grill, snipped into two-bite strips, and turned by staff. Pluck a more-ish char-edged piece from the grill and pop it in a lettuce cup, with rice and spring onion and a dab of soy. It's fresh, deep, crisp and chewy all at once.

There are individual serves of meat, too, such as trimmed pork belly mildly spiced with chilli flakes and fermented chilli paste. All the meat comes daily from Joanne's mum's business, Mrs Kim's BBQ which has been supplying barbecue meat to restaurants and backyard-barbecuers for 20 years.

Banchan (small side dishes) are so integral to Korean food that they're not listed - they're just always there. Here, you get spring onion, pickled white onion and kimchi gotjori-style: sometimes called kimchi-salad, it's not as fermented or funky as the more common baechu kimchi. Optional side orders include avocado and tomato salsa and a rocket salad with white onion, capers and curls of smoked salmon. Korean? No. Tasty? Sure.

"I'm Australian/Korean; I came here when I was two," says Chang. "This is the kind of food we'd serve our friends."

It's also the way you'd eat with friends: passing plates, eating the same dishes and talking.

Do … Mind the time. There are three sittings a night

Don't … Drink beer? There's soju, cider and sake, too

Dish … Moo set

Vibe … Chilled grill joint

Prices … Sets, $39 for 2 people; barbecue meat mains, $12-$18; desserts $5-$7