Dongnae, Bristol: ‘A handpicked flurry of Korean loveliness' – restaurant review

The Guardian

2 days ago

Bristol's very cool Chandos Road area isn't by any means a new food-lovers' hotspot. No, the stoves in this part of town have been bubbling away for decades – once upon a time, Keith Floyd, the original firestarter of the kitchen bad boys, held court on this very road. If you're a young thing and blissfully unaware of our man Floyd, please avail yourself of the hundreds of YouTube clips out there and count the many moments when his wit, snark and, in many cases, boggle-eyed drunkenness would not be deemed fit in these modern-day puritan times.
Floyd may be long gone, but the 21st-century Chandos Road is home to, among others, the well-loved Little Hollows Pasta Co and the much-lauded farm-to-fork Wilsons, and last autumn they were joined by Korean restuarant Dongnae, from husband-and-wife team Duncan Robertson and Kyu Jeong Jeon. The pair met at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Paris, moved on to run the now defunct L'Envie in Brive-La-Gaillarde, south-west France, before spending the best part of a decade in Jeon's native Korea. In 2019, they settled in Bristol to open the very popular Bokman, where dumplings, kimchi fried rice and cherry-flavoured soft-serve Jersey ice-cream are the order of the day.
Their latest venture is a little more earnest, authentic and pared back, though. It's billed as a traditional neighbourhood Korean barbecue restaurant, but it's actually a little stranger and more homespun than that. While London restaurant investors might splurge tens of thousands of pounds on imported chandeliers, Dongnae uses Ikea-alike student bedsit paper lanterns in its two-store shopfront space, and has spent very little indeed on furniture, wallpaper and counters. Rather fittingly, in fact, it feels a bit as if you are in a student bedsit, only with Robertson doing the communal cooking every night.
In keeping with this general aura, the menu itself is delicate, bespoke and thoughtful, too. Expect octopus and lamb fat kkochi (skewers), assorted punchy kimchis, hand-dived scallops, cockle and mussel bibimbap, and Korean beef tartare. Expect cold, bracing Korean soups and peculiar but unforgettable pond-green puddings – but more of that later. At lunch, there is an à la carte and a £24 set menu and, at dinner, the option of a hanjeongsik, an omakase-style seven-course menu that changes daily, and offers a handpicked flurry of Korean loveliness.
Dongnae is odd, unique and absolutely a roaring hit with Bristol's diners. It may not be to everyone's taste, especially if your only knowledge of Korean cooking is generous portions of Brit-pleasing scallion pancakes, bulgogi and, of course, bubbling sweetcorn in cheese sauce, all washed down with peach soju. Instead, here there are ginger old fashioneds, a low-intervention wine list, delicate servings of grilled monkfish with octopus alongside tiny bowls of seasoned seaweed or mustard leaf kimchi, and a very good raw sea bass mulhwe soup made with fresh sugar tomatoes. And if you get a bit lost trying to make head or tail of the menu, Dongnae's staff will expertly guide you through it and explain the difference between your naengchae and your naengguk. Yes, yukhoe is like beef tartare, and here it comes with a mound of leaves, cucumber and radish, all designed to be rolled up in sheets of nori. Bowls of soft, glossy yellow tofu come festooned with whiffy grated bottarga, though the front of house couldn't, of course, help me transfer it to my mouth when it evaded my attempts to capture it with the dainty chopsticks. We ate a hunk of hot grilled mackerel and cubes of wagyu that arrived on a cute little grill with generous ssam and sauces on the side.
Dongnae is an ornate feast of sweet, sour, sharp, puzzling and powerful. It is little wonder that Bristol's food scene is fighting for a table and feeling slightly irked that those tables now come with a limited time span. I didn't really expect much from dessert, because on the face of it these people seem so very serious, but how foolish I was, because Jeon's mugwort cake is one of the greatest things I've ever tasted. Yes, it looks like it ought to be dished up at a Harry Potter-themed tea party, and yes, it's blue in places and algae-green in others, but the novelty ends the moment you bite into its complex, soft, creamy, buttery richness. Mugwort cake, it turns out, is the sponge cake it has taken me until my vintage years to discover, and now I pine for it daily. This higgledy-piggledy restaurant is causing a stir on Chandos Road, just as Floyd once did, but for very different reasons. Grab a seat if you can. Buckle up. Enjoy the ride.
Dongnae 5-7 Chandos Road, Redland, Bristol BS6, 0117 302 1034. Open Tues-Sat, lunch noon-3pm, dinner 5-11pm. From about £50 a head à la carte; set lunch £24; seven-course hanjeongsik tasting menu £65, all plus drinks and service
The next episode of Grace's Comfort Eating podcast is out on Tuesday 19 August – listen to it here.