Restaurant Review: enjoyable and inexpensive Korean fare at Drunken Fish
wx050222
- Drunken Fish Bar & Restaurant
- Excise Building, Mayor Street Lr, North Dock, Dublin 1
- Noon - 9.45pm, Monday-Sunday
- 01-6720025, drunkenfish.ie
I’ve written before about my envy of the late Jonathan Gold, the much-missed restaurant critic of the Los Angeles Times who had nearly 1,000 Korean restaurants to choose from — enough to pen a 12,000 word essay on '60 Korean dishes every Angelino should know’.
Pickings are slimmer in Dublin with many Korean restaurants staffed by Chinese chefs. I’ve had solid bibimbap (most recently in Hailan on Dame St.) and good bulgogi beef and kimchi in others, but I’m still searching for outstanding Korean Fried Chicken - the classic ultra-thin batter version I’ve read about remains elusive although it is hard to fault the crunchy Chimac version.
Drunken Fish in the IFSC had a lot of praise when it opened but for some reason I never got around to visiting. The bar downstairs is enormous and the restaurant upstairs similarly so, and both are probably best experienced on a busy Friday evening rather than a damp Sunday lunchtime.
Our meal began promisingly with fried Mandu (gyoza) dumplings (4 for €5). Pork Mandu tasted as they should with soft sweet pork meat in crisp pastry, and while the Kimchi Mandu worked well enough, I’d have preferred more of a kick from the fermented cabbage interior.
Next to arrive was the Bulgogi Bento Box (€10) — soy-marinated thin slices of cooked beef and rice which had sweet beefy flavours with pleasing umami notes. The other sections of the bento box were less interesting with pleasant but mild kimchi, some unseasoned fried egg, two cold baby potatoes dotted with three or four sesame seeds each, and an unnecessary baby tomato sitting on a lemon slice.
We cheered up considerably when two huge plates of fried chicken arrived. Half a 'Spicy Chicken' (€12.50) had been portioned and encased in a rich sticky sweet coating, the meat was tender and juicy while the exterior was nicely crispy with a good chilli hit. The Boneless Spicy Chicken (€12.50) version worked less well as the dense coating overwhelmed the nuggets of chicken. On the side was a sizeable portion of raw chopped white cabbage drizzled with a mild hot sauce and some lettuce drizzled with mayonnaise — we ignored them.
Japchae (€12.90) is a classic Korean dish of potato starch glass noodles stir-fried with vegetables or meat and served in a light broth. Drunken Fish’s version was pleasant but unremarkable, and by now we were full of chicken — I also suspect I should have ordered the beef version.
Most Asian cuisines pay scant attention to dessert, but in Korea there is a very active pastry tradition with French-Korean bakeries now commonplace. 'Baby Choux' (€5.50) is four mini choux buns made from a light fluffy pastry which yields its sweet creamy filling easily making them pleasing bites of happiness. The Peanut and Caramel Cake (€5) was not successful with bland grainy chocolate and thin caramel on top of stodgy dense pastry.
The drinks list is short with a choice of four whites and four reds, none of which I felt were interesting enough to order so we opted for beer. Sadly there were only macro-beers from multi-national brewers with no craft or independent options. We opted for pints of Tiger (Year of the Tiger afterall) which although owned by Heineken, at least has some Asian heritage having been created in Singapore in 1932 as a joint venture between the Dutch company and a local soft drinks producer.
My visit to Drunken Fish was rather underwhelming and many of the dishes lacked spark and creativity, but perhaps I’m being unfairly critical. All around us were groups of young people — a mix of Korean, Chinese, Indian and Nigerian, all happily frying strips of chunky pork belly on the Korean barbecue tables and the smell of caramelising pork fat nearly made us hungry again. I should visit again and try the bbq, and order a side of dumplings, a whole fried chicken and two portions of choux pastries for dessert.
Lunch for two including starters, far too many main courses, two desserts and three pints of Tiger beer cost a very reasonable €91.
- Food: 6.5/10
- Drink: 4/10
- Service: 7/10
- Ambience: 7.5/10
- Value: 8.5/10
Drunken Fish is a large bar and restaurant serving solid if slightly underwhelming Korean food — choose carefully however and you should have an enjoyable and inexpensive meal.
