Dangun — Restaurant in Bristol

Not Korean, dirty place, inedible food. We went here mid afternoon on Saturday and were the only customers even though the manager who I spoke to half an hour before said I should book as they might be fully booked on a busy Saturday. When we sat down the table next to us was covered in half left food, drinks and cans of previous customers. There were 3 staff basically doing nothing but none of them cleared it up until, at least 5 minutes later, I started to pile the dirty plates up myself. As for the food, every dish was disgusting. The so called Korean fried chicken (photograph) was just heavy batter hiding a small piece of chewy chicken over which they had poured some sweet gloopy Macdonald’s type brown sauce. The “Korean” fried cauliflower (is there such a dish?) was mushy over cooked cauliflower again surrounded by far too much batter with, this time, a cloying pink slime poured on top. The gyoza were not grilled, as billed, they were horrible, stodgy, flavourless and cold. Also covered in sugary brown sauce. The bulgogi was a tiny dish of cold strips of stir fried beef, bearing no relationship to actual bulgogi. I attach the one page menu which has very little on it and very little mention of Korean. Even the kimchi was fake. It was just a tiny pile of soggy cabbage in vinegar and ketchup. The manager, who was perfectly pleasant, was doing the cooking wearing his T shirt but no apron so he served us with his front spattered with bits of food and frying fat. As I write this I am trying to hold back retching as I remember the smell of dirty old frying oil that they obviously rarely change. To be honest it was like eating in a squat; there was a big black hole in the ceiling by the door, the white paintwork in places was dirty and grey and a pigeon came in and walked around under our table whilst we were eating. Sorry guys but surely you could get a Korean cook in to make the food tasty and not just for drunk students. And some...

So here are the dishes with my hand, just give you a sense of portion. We had pork belly, bugogi, tofu soup, Korean fried chicken, and two bowls of steamed rice.

Here is my rating of all dishes (out of 100):

Pork belly-50 Bulgogi-30 Tofu soup-20 Korean Fried Chicken-20

The reason why I hated the fried chicken so much is that it’s pre-fried and therefore extremely dry. The coating was kind of soggy and it obviously used chicken breast which made it even dryer.

The tofu soup was very hard to understand as it kind of blended the tofu instead of keeping it as whole pieces. It was not served hot, and it generally lacked taste, not to mention the complex taste we expected from it. Actually it was kinda damaging to our taste buds, that’s how bad it was.

The bulgogi was equally dry and the accompanying kimchi tasted only sour but not fermented.

The pork belly was ok and we were really saving it for the last bites of our rice so we don’t choke on our food. But it was cold and the rind was very hard.

The rice was also hard to understand to have huge pieces of spring onion on top. We cannot see the point apart from making it look a bit more expensive (it was quite pricy for a tiny bowl).

Overall, the meal was overpriced and did not bring the warmth and joy we wanted. We should have known from the moment when we read ‘casual Asian’...

Honestly, the menu's pretty neat because it's so small and focused, which I actually quite like. The flip side of that, though, is there aren't a huge amount of vegan options, which is a bit of a bummer if you're looking for that.

The tteokbokki was decent, no complaints there, but for my taste, it just needed a bit more of that proper gochujang kick. And I felt like the rice cakes and sauce weren't quite singing in harmony, a little off balance, you know? The cauliflower dish was quite unusual; it tasted more like a falafel in cauliflower form than anything Korean, which was just a bit odd. On the bright side, the rice was absolutely spot on and really brought everything together.

But here's the kicker, and what really got to me: the poor ventilation system. You could genuinely smell and feel the grease hanging in the air, and I walked out of there feeling like my clothes had had a full Korean BBQ experience without me! That's not really how you want to leave a restaurant, is it?

All in all, it's not the best Korean food I've ever had, especially after trying the real deal in Korea – nothing quite compares once you've had that! But yeah,...