Damso Restaurant - Vancouver, BC

Me and hubby have been craving Korean fried chicken. My craving for Korean food usually happens after days of watching Korean dramas. That's what happened this time as well. We have been going on Kdrama marathon since a couple of weeks ago. I made gamjatang (Korean pork bone soup) a couple of days ago. But fried chicken isn't something I will try to do at home. So we need to get a professional help for it.

Found this Damso Restaurant on Denman. There's a similar name restaurant on Robson by the name Damso Modern. But from reviews it seemed that the one on Denman does have fried chicken. So there we went on a Sunday afternoon.

We got there around 12. As we expected the place was empty. It's not a big place to begin with, probably could only fit like 25 people. That's why we tried to go there earlier before Sunday crowds fill the place. Not sure if this place gets busy on Sunday lunch.

We ordered fried chicken, 48 hour short ribs, bibimbab and korean tacos. The tacos came out first on a personal plate. Very cute. It's a slightly crispy taco soft shell with slivered of beef cooked in sweet bulgogi style and gochujang (red pepper paste) then topped of with thinly sliced iceberg lettuce. It's delicious.



Then we got our fried chicken. It's big chunk of boneless fried chicken. We also got some sweet red sauce with a small side of pickle daikon radish. I didn't try the red sauce. The fried chicken was crispy, garlicky and juicy. It almost felt like a crime to dip it in any other sauce. It's sooo good by itself.

The bibimbab we ordered with spicy pork. The topping of bean sprout, spinach, slivers of carrot, pickled cucumber, mushroom, spicy pork and a sunny side up egg. The topping were all arranged nicely on covering the rice beneath it. It came on an earthenware but didn't seem like it was hot enough to actually cause crust on the rice. I didn't quite like my rice to be all crusty but at the same time this bibimbab didn't seem to be hot enough. After we mixed it all in, it seemed a bit too wet. Too much topping ?

The last order was the 48 hour korean short ribs. This dish was tiny almost like a personal size. At $25 per order I was expecting it a bit bigger. Also that small container (the same size as the bibimbab) contained only two pieces of ribs. Albeit it was pretty big. But the bottom was filled with chunks of potato and tteobokki (rice cakes). It was on the sweet side and after a while felt a bit too sweet for me. Though at the same time it was also pretty spicy. I must say that I did enjoy it more than the bibimbab but I didn't feel that it was a good value.

The four star I gave this restaurant was mainly for the fried chicken. Will we go back ? I'm not too sure as I think I would explore other places for fried chicken if we get cravings in the future.

Denman Restaurant
867 Denman St
Vancouver, BC V6G 2L9
604 632 0022