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The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Dongnae, Bristol: ‘A handpicked flurry of Korean loveliness' – restaurant review
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.
Telegraph
22-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
William Sitwell reviews Dongnae, Bristol: ‘The freshest spring shower of a feast imaginable'
It was a Damascene-like corrective. My mind and body altered, albeit on the single issue of fermented cabbage. For years I'd been swerving it. Firstly, because it involves cabbage, the vegetable that traumatised my childhood (overcooked as it was and force-fed to me) and then because it became trendy some 15 years ago. Suddenly, kimchi was everywhere. Every tattooed, unshaven mockney running a pop-up in London was serving it up. Korean food was in, crowned with a relish of cabbage, presumably dug into the ground at allotments in Hackney and then, suitably festering, brought to the surface, covered in chilli and bottled. All of sound mind – of which I was alone in the fashion-craven food world – declined it. But now, some years on, I find myself eyeing it on a table in a suburb of Bristol. The Korean revolution has now reached Chandos Road, and Dongnae, which means 'neighbourhood', offers a menu brimming with small plates, stuff from the charcoal grill, banchan (side dishes), shiksa (mains, essentially) and two puds. And a wonderfully colourful culinary experience it is too. While the outside is that of a classic Victorian shopfront, inside it's all minimal, handcrafted cabinetry, hardwood and white laminate tables, with slats screening the open kitchen. And the service is helpful and friendly, giving off that vibe you get from a university town where the students are still duped into thinking life holds some possibilities, jobs even. A starter of bream sashimi was as soft, translucent and tenderly flavoured as you might dream, and with excellent wasabi. And there were skewers of octopus and monkfish, tender and sweet in a glaze of gochucumin (a warming, devilish concoction pepped up with red chilli) and covered in crunchy chopped chives. I'd seen the word jellyfish on the menu so felt the urge to order what we would never eat at home. It came in the form of 'salted jellyfish naengchae', a salad with pork hock and Devon crab buddying up. While the crab added some sweetness, the ham and other leaves with their soft textures all conspired to camouflage the jellyfish, to mask – or indeed excuse – it. But find it I did. And all this I did selflessly so that you don't have to. I ate it in all its rubbery, chewy, seawatery glory. And, frankly, if you must know, I'd rather have been stung by it. Yet it was a segue to greatness, the centrepiece of which was wagyu beef – and not insanely priced – a strip loin from the grill presented on a handsome piece of firm wire mesh fixed in wood. The beef caressed the palate before melting. It was rich and satisfying and a dish that makes one simply admire a vegetarian for their willpower. It came with a host of little dishes: of sauce and raw garlic, chilli and verdant salad leaves. You could wrap it all up, adjust to your garlic/heat spec and stuff it all in. The freshest spring shower of a feast imaginable. Then came that kimchi, rich and hot and adding a deeply exotic texture to the table, and yet more – dongchimi – fresher and in brine. Both slapping me in the face for my history of churlish refusal. There was also deep-fried Korean chicken wings and a wonderful plate of asparagus in an eggy sauce, topped with milky trout roe. We finished with a rice pud, another childhood horror rectified to creamy glory with a tart jam of persimmon and a scattering of dried red beans. Dongnae, from price and vibe to design and flavour, is beautifully pitched.
