Grill Demiglace is a restaurant in Palpan-dong. Palpan-dong is the little neighborhood you reach when you head a bit further in from Samcheong-dong. There’s always a police officer posted at the mouth of the alley, which makes walking in feel slightly awkward, but the neighborhood itself has a nice atmosphere. Grill Demiglace is a Western-style place recently opened by a member of my food club, and there was a foodie meetup to celebrate it, so off I went.
The front entrance of Grill Demiglace
The location itself isn’t hard to find, but the sign is far too easy to miss. They really need to flag where the place is in a bigger, more eye-catching way.
Inside
Simple and clean. The sound is decent too. I like the calm, weighty mood, but the lighting is brutally dark, so my photos came out completely useless.
The tableware
Simple again, and I suspect it reflects the owner-chef’s own taste.
Bread and salad
The salad is quite tart, and maybe because of that it tasted better tucked into a halved roll like a sandwich than eaten on its own. It had been ages since I’d had this old-school style of salad, so it actually felt fresh. The only shame is that apart from this salad there’s nothing on the menu that lets you eat a decent amount of vegetables.
Heineken poured into a Suntory glass
Poured for the toast. Prices here, drinks included, run a little expensive. The selection is very limited too, and there are plenty of quirks, like selling vodka, which hardly fits the concept of an old-school Western diner. If you know the owner-chef’s tastes the menu will make sense to you, but if you walk in knowing nothing about it you might be a bit thrown.
The signature dish, hamburg steak
They say it’s made with hanu Korean beef, but it’s a little dry. A hamburg steak is really at its best when it’s packed with fat and the juices come running out, and that isn’t the case here. As something to drink beer with, though, this might actually beat the fattier traditional version. The demi-glace sauce is well made, but apparently the dishes that suit demi-glace perfectly, like hayashi rice or omurice, aren’t on the menu yet. The chef said he still needs more practice. The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word demiglace is the drama Lunch Queen, so that was a real letdown.
Gratin
What comes out is a gratin with a rich, bold, heavy-lined flavor. Tasty, but again it feels less like a meal than a drinking snack, or hangover food.
The opener
It says Gold Rabbit on it. It was so ridiculously oversized that I had to take a picture.
Chicken katsu
Good meat, cut thick and fried. Thanks to the perk of a foodie meetup we got through almost the entire menu, and I’d say this was the best dish of the night.
Takuan pickles
They brought them out when we asked.
Vodka
We mixed it into our beer. This is the first Western restaurant in my life to stock a whole range of vodkas.
Cranberry juice
A good drink for sobering up.. cranberry juice at a Western restaurant.. sure, it can be there.
Tonkatsu
I heard they use a good fryer, and the frying itself was well done. The meat was a bit thin, though, and the chew felt lacking. Tonkatsu came out after the hamburg steak, the gratin and the chicken katsu, and eating nothing but heavy fried dishes started to give me an intense urge to refresh my palate somehow.
Beef katsu
The frying skill was superb, but here too the meat was a little thin. Served like this it works well as a drinking snack, but it lacks appeal as a dish in its own right. And although people tend to say I eat more than most, when it’s greasy food and nothing but greasy food, I started to feel my limit.
Shishito peppers
The chef sent these out on the house. They tidy up your palate nicely. It’s something I used to order a lot at yakitori places, so I was surprised to see it at a Western diner.
The owner-chef isn’t a restaurant professional by trade, and the place has only just opened, so it wouldn’t be fair to pass proper judgment on the strength of what came out this time. Once some time passes and things settle, I expect they’ll find a character of their own. Drinking vodka with tonkatsu as the snack was a novel experience, too. Once omurice is on the menu, coming back with someone who can hold their drink sounds like a good plan.