Obun Chef, Cnr Pirie and King William St

I’ve been interested by Obun Chef for a while now because I walk past it on the way to work. It’s one of the newer places along King William St and I’ve been hoping that, like the obun themselves, Obun Chef’s slightly crusty exterior contained a delicious gooey centre. Yesterday, I sampled Obun Chef.


The seating in Obun Chef is sparse, but you’d probably be ok to sit and eat lunch in there. A number of people were milling about waiting for food. In my view, large numbers of people waiting can mean one of two things. Either the place is popular because it’s delicious, or place is poorly run. Obun Chef is probably the latter. The wait was long and the meal was average. They were doing a special on teriyaki chicken and dumplings, so I ordered those. The signage promised a deliciously glossy whole piece of thigh…


… but they didn’t deliver. The chicken they served was chewy little strips. The flavour was good (they were really generous with the pepper and ginger) but the texture just didn’t cut it.

And the dumplings had bloody corn in them!


Don’t get me wrong. I like corn . But it doesn’t belong in a dumpling. Plus the dumpling skin was a bit rubbery and the meat filling a bit bland. It was an average dumpling.

Because the name of the place is OBUN Chef, I thought I’d pick one up. I’ve had obun before (there is a place in the Adelaide the Adelaide Central Market that does really good obun – except for their ham, cheese and corn (grrrrrrr, corn) obun), so I’m a bit of a fan (a big enough fan that if obun had a radio song I’d sing along (something like: I like obun and I cannot lie; all you other brothers can’t deny; when a chef walks in with yellow round thing and flaunts it in your face you get hungry!), but not so big that I’d join an Obun fan club and ask it to by my house… (apparently someone wrote a letter like this to Lucy Lawless, star of TV’s Xena: Warrior Princess!)). I tried the coconut obun.


This was one of the more disappointing obun that I’ve had. Unlike the obun from the market, this one was almost cold and tasted stale.


Disappointing obun (maybe I just got a bad one), the tough chicken and the obscurely corn filled dumplings aside, I’d probably try Obun Chef again… the salad wrap looks fabulous and they offer pancakes with strawberry and avocado (and not corn).