Levi Eun made his name on Lonsdale Street with Ondo, the slick Korean wine bar that has quietly become a destination for late-shift hospitality workers. His follow-up, Sagye, is the opposite proposition: 23 seats, one soup, and a kitchen that turns over 100 kilograms of wagyu brisket and shin every day.

Gomtang — a milky, hours-simmered Korean beef broth — gets the canonical treatment. Diners salt and season to taste at the table, with rice, kimchi and a short list of banchan as accompaniment. A second bowl, jinyuk gomtang, leans heavier on tendon and rich cuts for the colder months.

Eun says Sagye is part of a longer project to widen Melbourne's reading of Korean food beyond barbecue and fried chicken. 'People here know bulgogi. They don't yet know what a great bowl of gomtang feels like at the end of a Tuesday,' he said at the opening.