Review: Dosi Takes a Lighthearted, Unpretentious Approach to its Food

Photos by Troy Fields

Andy Warhol would be proud of this pop art on a plate -- the smoked Spanish mackerel.

The smoked Spanish mackerel at Dosi Restaurant + Soju Bar looks like pop art on a plate. Bite-size rectangles of luminescent filet as tender as one could wish for are each garnished with a strip of lardo so thin that it's translucent. Rolls made of equally thin strips of celery stand on end, adding cylinders to the study in shapes. Toasted red quinoa adds a fun, popping crunch and everything is pulled together by a veritable lily pad of deep green watercress and dill purée.

This is just one of the creations that make Dosi a restaurant worth visiting. It's a rather small place, with only about 60 seats, with a hardwood floor, and concrete block and paneled walls. As a result, the place can be loud. Fortunately, it was built for socializing, not seriousness.

A funky tree with bright blue-white lights stands by the front entrance, and color-changing bulbs that cycle through rainbow hues light the back bar counter. They make the place feel a bit like a club in Seoul.

A third of the dining area is taken up by a table that runs the entire length of the room, with chairs on each side. It's perfect for groups of friends to gather around, order -everything on the menu and then pass dishes gleefully back and forth like teenagers at a pizza shop.

Within the nebulous, fledgling arena of "nouveau Korean" cuisine, Dosi has found its footing with a lighthearted approach. Most of its dishes are small yet ideal for sharing. Actually, not just ideal -- they're the kind of food you want to share with friends, with exclamations of, "Here, you've got to try this!" Even the plates are clever, with built-in notches to hold chopsticks when they're not in use.

Dosi also avoids the mistake of trying to fancy-up traditional Korean dishes. Yes, they have a shrimp bibimbap, but they're not going to make a big show out of it and stir it up tableside. It's served in the traditional manner in a searing-hot bowl.

That's not to say that Dosi's approach to everything is traditional. Most of its dishes don't seem as if they are following any rules at all. Take, for example, the heirloom tomatoes and grilled tofu carefully placed on a bed of torn shiso leaves. Which playbook did this come from? There's no telling, but this beauty bursts with red and green color and the shiso leaves give contrast and fragrance to the crisp tomatoes that tingle on your tongue.

It's the same dish that betrays the fact that Dosi is struggling to find the hook for its audience. There was a menu change in between our visits. On the first visit, this dish was called simply "Tomatoes." On the second, it had been renamed "Grilled Tofu." The first name is much closer to the truth. It's all about the popping, bursting tomatoes, and the tofu is merely an accompaniment.

Dosi has a few other issues. One is having too many items on its smallish menu with similar flavor profiles. Over the course of our visits, we ordered three dishes that all had a rich, braised-meat-umami-starch kind of formula. The least successful of these was the black bean noodles (featuring oxtail), a dish with contrast and punch so markedly absent that it just fell on your tongue like a placid stroganoff.

The street dumplings were better but not compelling. The dumplings were little rice cakes strewn throughout a combination of pork belly, Brussels sprouts, prune and pear. The flavor combination might be a lot more cohesive and interesting if these were stuffed dumplings.

The third dish in the same vein is the lamb collar, but this one is the keeper. The sauce, made with dried persimmons, adds dark, exciting mystery to the depths of this dish. Persimmons have an incredibly short period of ripeness before they turn to the dark side, so using dried ones is a wonderful way to make the season last. The little rice cakes make another appearance, but in this case, they're quite welcome.