DOTORI – Korean / Japanese in Finsbury park

I can say that Dotori is one of the best Asian food  restaurants in the area of Finsbury park. The prices are also medium-low for this tasty food and if you are around the area you should give a try.

On this occasion, we were four people for dinner that allowed us to order different dishes from the Korean and Japanese parts of the menu. Dotori offers the best traditional food of each of those countries:  Sushi, sashimi, tempura and donburi dishes are from the Japanese side of the menu and bibimbap, stew pots and deopbap dishes (it is s a bowl of rice with some sort of toppings) complete the Korean side of the menu.

There is also a wide variety of appetiser dishes (Japanese and Korean), so we tried a kind of Korean pancakes Buchu Jeon (Chive pancake served with soy sauce) and Haemul Buchu Jeon (Seafood and chive pancake served with soy sauce) and I can say that the Seafood pancake was really delicious.

From the Japanese starters, we chose Korokke (a kind of mashed potato with chopped vegetables deep fried and server with a special sauce) but you choose among other appetisers like the famous Gyoza, Chicken Yakitori, Edamame that you can find i any Japanese restaurant.

Then, as main dishes we tried four different dishes; from the Koran side:

• Haemultang (a spicy hot pot soup filled with fresh cod, prawn, mussels, squid, tofu and vegetables), this dish is one of Korea’s most famous traditional Seafood stews but you need to really like spicy food, although is served with a bowl of rice.
• Bulgogi Deopbap , thinly sliced tender beef steak in a distinctive Korean pear and soy marinade with vegetables over rice, this is served with a Miso Soup. Bulgogi  is a classic Korean grilled beef (Here in Bulgogi article on Wikipedia you can find further information about how is elaborate this dish).

  

• Mapa Tofu Deopbap, similar dish to the previous Deopbap but on this case ready for Vegetarians. It is dish of deep fried tofu squares stirred together with diced vegetables and unique spicy sweet sauce over rice. This was also served with Miso soup.

  

Last dish in our menu was from the Japanese side, we preferred on this occasion to try more options from the Korean side, however, we will write shortly here another post about some London Japanese Restaurants.

• Tempura Ramen, a spicy instant noodle soup served with two fried king prawns and veg tempura sprinkled with seaweed.

  

All of the four main dishes are recommendable, actually this is not the first time  that we visit this restaurant and writing a post about this small secret place was on my pending list long time ago, on previous occasions I  ordered Bibimbap (you can read another article about this food in this blog) and also sushi. As curiosity, on the menu there is a “One Piece” Bento Set  that I imagine it is mentioned on the famous anime of the same name.

Regarding the drinks menu, there are also Korean beers (Hite and Cass) and the Japanese beers (Asahi and Kirin), Sake and Soju (rice liquors) and a couple of plum wines that I have not have the opportunity of trying yet.

The only inconvenience is that is very difficult to get a table on weekends for dinner and we do not recommend more than 6 people guests as the place is quite small and would be difficult to get a place for dinner.. The waiting time can vary from 20 minutes to one hour.