Work was crazy busy last fall, to the point that even my regular food outings were in danger. So I figured I’d at least call a meetup near home, and we went to Ozen, a well-reviewed Japanese restaurant in Samseong-dong.
Ozen
It’s a bit awkward to get to if you’re coming from far away, but it’s near my place so it was easy for me. With prices going up lately, it’s really hard to find good places in Gangnam, so this was my first Gangnam meetup in ages. Hongdae is just too far for me, so I’d like to find good spots in Gangnam when I can, but there aren’t many places I actually want to go.
The table setting
The place isn’t small, but it wasn’t very busy that day. We ordered the omakase course without a second thought.
Starter
The style is just like what I used to eat a lot in Japan, built around seasonal ingredients. They’d piled all sorts of things onto a persimmon, and it was pretty good. They keep costs down by skipping expensive ingredients, but that’s just the fate of restaurants in Gangnam, where rent is so high. You can scoop out the persimmon itself with a spoon along with the starter inside, but everyone ate so politely that I didn’t eat the persimmon either.
Soup
Even the little dishes are tasty.
Ankimo and oyster, I think
Both are great in autumn. Most Japanese restaurants in Korea serve the same menu regardless of the season, but here you definitely get proper Japanese-style food. I heard the menu changes about once a month.
Boiled octopus
A standard dish. If I hadn’t eaten much Japanese food, I might have been impressed.
Burdock
Why is there shichimi in it… and it was hard, too. Not a fan.
Assorted sashimi for three
This is the Japanese way. If the Korean style is one big platter you dig into, this is pretty much the opposite. The sashimi was very fresh and aged just right. It felt like I was at a neighborhood Japanese restaurant in Japan. Maybe this is how a French person feels when they drop by L’Espoir.
A shot of two portions
If you’re not used to getting one piece per person, just enough for a taste, you might get upset at how small the portions are, but this is what real Japanese food is like.
You get to choose your sake cup.
Another Japanese touch. I had a similar experience at Kyorakutei. They picked a good model to follow.
Grilled pomfret, I think…
The taste was so-so. My camera isn’t a wide-angle, so it’s hard to shoot the menu, but from now on I really should photograph it even if it’s a hassle.
Out comes the sake.
Fried fish
Crispy and great with drinks, but I was still hungry, so drinks snack, what drinks snack… well, that’s how it goes.
Ochazuke with a yaki onigiri in it
Finally, the rice course arrives.
Sherbet
And there’s dessert too.
What surprised me was that a Japanese restaurant at almost the same level as what you’d eat in Japan actually exists in Korea. The prices are reasonable, too. If you like the Korean-style Japanese restaurant formula of tsukidashi plus flatfish sashimi, a place like this won’t mean much to you, but if you want to experience what real Japanese-style food is, I’d recommend giving it a try. Some of you might wonder how it’s different from Japanese places like Kadoya or Inoshishi these days, but those are izakaya built around à la carte dishes that come out as soon as you order, which is a bit different from a Japanese restaurant serving carefully prepared kaiseki. And if you ask whether that difference is such a big deal, well, I don’t really have an answer…
For round two, we went to a nearby shellfish place that looked like it had just opened.
We ate our fill and got nicely stuffed. Heh…
Then we went to the home of one of the food meetup members and were treated to Tieguanyin and various other things.
I’m not much of a tea drinker, but it was such a precious tea that I couldn’t pass it up. So this is what tea at the level of art tastes like. And that was the end of a really fun meetup.