Playing on Kakao Map app (in Korea Google Maps does not work on mobile devices…) I noticed a tuna restaurant not far from my hotel: Donggang Tuna (by the way, Donggang is a port town in Taiwan famous for its seafood including bluefin tuna). I needed to check it out.
The visit
I showed up at the door of the small restaurant shortly after 6pm and I was welcomed by a waitress and the chef. It looked like a one-man show. I already liked it.
They did not speak English and there was no English menu, but by looking at the pictures uploaded on Kakao Map I understood that the restaurant served primarily set menus and I was fine with that. I opted for the 70,000 WON set menu, de facto an omakase (there was one more expensive for 100,000 WON and a couple at a lower price point). I think it is also possible to order individual dishes.
I was seated at the counter, right in front of the chef that would hand me most of the dishes throughout the dinner.
I was promptly offered a welcome dish that I would describe as an Italian risotto with mushrooms (it was not quite a porridge, or maybe something in the middle).
Then the seafood started to flow… the first dish was a mix of sashimi including a piece of dried fish roe.
Then the chef started to serve sashimi from cut different parts of the tuna. I never experienced so many different cuts. For a tuna lover like me, this was amazing.
Meantime, more hot dishes were coming from the kitchen. The first was boiled abalone with a chunk of roe.
Miso soup.
Then three pieces of sushi were lined up on the serving dish: tuna was supplemented by a piece of salmon belly.
A pair of grilled items: a whitebait fish and a meaty prawn.
More exotic tuna sashimi.
A bowl of jellyfish.
One more whitebait fish, this one came full of roe. There was also a piece of eel not pictured.
Then from the kitchen they brought a piece of tuna head. The chef helped me to clean it and there was a surprising amount of meat to eat.
More tuna sashimi!
Then I was invited to taste a pleasantly refreshing piece of vegetable root (with its leaves).
The check
The final check was 70,000 WON (the fixed price) or around 62 USD. Tea was included.
This was a great meal. I loved all the dishes. Some of the tuna cuts were very rare and overall 62 USD for this kind of food is a very reasonable price point.
This is a restaurant I would not mind visiting again in the future.
Where in Seoul:
83, Yonsei-ro 2-gil, Seodaemun-gu
Look up Donggang Tuna on Kakao Map.
The restaurant has a website all in Korean.