Lunch at Dosirak

When it is really cold and cloudy I love going to Dosirak for lunch. Dosirak is a Japanese-Korean restaurant in the centre of Athens, near Syntagma square. Unlike most ethnic restaurants - which flourish Athens - this has a simple, minimal decoration and a humble profile aiming to attract well-dressed businessmen who are seeking a decent refuge to eat and talk for a brief period of time.

TIP : When I visit an ethnic food restaurant I always wonder if the restaurant is visited by tourists only or by anyone. If it is unfortunate enough to attract tourists only there must be something very wrong with it; either in matters of food quality or prices.

Dosirak is proud enough to attract Japanese and Greeks. It is supposed to be one of the best restaurants of its kind for those who feel nostalgic for original Japanese dishes. If you go there for lunch you rarely find an empty space, all tables are full. A reservation is a must. At night it has less people, but at the weekends loads of families go there to enjoy traditional tastes. I had made my reservation.

I walked in and was shown my table by a polite and a bit impersonal waitress. A table next to the window. I am not interested in the view, I have seen this street 1001 times, I turned my back to the window and look inside the shop. It is really small, having just about 20 tables altogether. The area is divided in 3 parts by attractive screens, the first part is the eating hall, then the bar and at the back the kitchen. The walls are painted grey and decorated with pinkish ikebana paintings. Paper lanterns hang from the ceiling and the soothing voice of Mariah Carey murmurs near my head. I order, vegetable tempura, green tea, te makis, tonkatsu.

First comes a big heavy teapot with green tea and a tiny glass. I needed it because it is really cold and wet outside. Then the waitress brought a miniature wooden ladder and stood it in front of me on the table. On every step was one te maki. A te maki

is a cone of uncooked fish (mine was with sea bass, mixed with rice and vegetables, wrapped in seaweed just like an ice cream cone. The 4 te makis were an exceptional sight as they proudly stood on the steps (tiny holes were there to support them), like shy debutants waiting for being asked to dance.
A small basket comes next. It has a lacy doily at the bottom and contains crispy slices of fried courgettes, onion rings, slices of aubergines, peppers and round chips. There are 3 pieces of each vegetable, not a great quantity but enough.
The main dish is called tonkatsu, it is a huge pile of rice in the middle adorned with thin slices of fried pork fillets. The taste is new to me, neither Chinese nor Japanese, I cannot think of its state of origin, yet I like it very much. My meal closes with a surpise. A wooden bowl appears with two pinkish apples and a spoon. I never heard of eating uncooked apples with a spoon, but then I though maybe they weren’t apples but some other local fruit, I tried them and they were ice cream made to look like apples!!!

I had these cakes the second time I went there, they were sweet rice cakes