Dongnae

The Sunday Times

Tim Hayward – in common with many an Occidental taster – had never understood the appeal of tofu, a key East Asian ingredient, before his meal at this “gently inspiring” Korean restaurant from Kyu Jeong Jeon and Duncan Robertson, a chef couple who met working under Joel Robuchon in Paris.

The meal began in style with a “spectacular” hand-roll of Devon crab and Icelandic urchin roe wrapped not in familiar nori but in a special seaweed brought back from Korea, with an “assertive, almost tea-like taste that complements the creamy crab”. Dishes of pork belly (in Korean, literally “three-layer meat”) with fermented sardine pickle, grilled soy-glazed mackerel and clam and mussel bibimbap were also excellent.

Tim’s tofu enlightenment came in the shape of a stew that also involved small chunks of meat, courgettes, mushrooms and seaweed, and was “so good I seriously considered giving up cleaning my teeth”. The brown liquid in which it all swam was made from miso-like doenjang proudly reared by the proprietors for five years, resulting in flavours that were “deep, complex, sophisticated, rich. Give it some private tuition and three months building a school in Ghana and it’s got every chance of getting into Oxford”.

As for the tofu, “this stuff explained everything. Subtle fungoid flavours. Creaminess. Like a custard made with only the white parts of mushrooms grown in Paris in catacombs on the bones of saints.”

Tim Hayward - 2024-12-15

The Observer

Rebecca Nicholson enjoyed a deceptively casual but revelatory Korean meal at a restaurant whose name means ‘neighbourhood’, and which “presented itself like a plain white T-shirt on a supermodel. Everything about it shrugged: yeah, I know.” 

Mushroom sotbap – short-grain rice in a sizzling pot, topped with chilli-spiked perilla oil and an egg yolk – had a soothing warmth; “the nuttiness, with the heat and richness of the sauces, turned those mushrooms and rice into something holy”. 

“The tuna belly hand roll was delicate with wasabi, which I thought hated, though it turned out I just hate the nuclear green splodge from a small plastic sachet. It introduced a swaggering warmth that spread lazily, then blossomed suddenly, a journey of flavour that was repeated throughout the meal.”

Rebecca Nicholson - 2026-03-08