After being underwhelmed by dancerobot we decided to finish a Saturday night out at the Korean-American gastropub SouthGate.  As a fusion restaurant the menu has several American dishes remixed with Korean flavors – French fries with a kimchi vinaigrette, French fries with a puree of garlic and scallion and gochugaro aioli (SouthGate fries), a Seoul Nashville style hot-chicken, and Korean tacos.  The SouthGate fries were a disappointment, tossing the fries in pureed garlic and scallion and an aioli just made the fries limp and soggy. But the menu also has some Korean classics, like mandoo, sotteok, ssam, dolsot bibimbap and a range of soju.  The restaurant has a long bar, tables along the wall opposite the bar and some outdoor seating.

The Dumplings and Buns:  Southgate has pork mandoo and vegetable mandoo which can be served either steamed or fried.   I suspect that these dumplings were the frozen mass-produced variety, but even if I am correct here, I enjoyed the fried order of pork dumplings I got at SouthGate more than I enjoyed the house made dumplings at dancerobot.  Southgate also serves stuffed bao pockets with a choice of bulgogi beef, spicey pork, shitake mushrooms or tofu filling.  The bao also come adorned with pickles and sesame aioli.  The tofu bao was really good – the tofu was lightly fried on the outside and soft on the inside and I really enjoyed the sesame aioli and the acidity of the pickles.  I would go back to SouthGate for more tofu bao.

The Location:  SouthGate is on the corner of 18^th and Lombard streets in Philadelphia’s Graduate Hospital neighborhood.