January 2016 Update
Came back again after our last visit more than two years ago now ! The girls appear to have changed, the show is different – there’s accordions, solo flute performance, rocking it out in guitar and keyboards, and even fan dancing. Haha. Entertaining. (Note : Please do not take photos of them during the shows….)
Food was alright, least I got pictures of it this time! There’s set meals for 50AED per person which is pretty good 🙂 Definitely somewhere to bring your guests if they’ve never been to a North Korean restaurant! Carry on reading below for my thoughts on our first visit.
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North Korean food.
Such an interesting night. We’ve heard about this place from our mates nearly a year ago now and have been wanting to check it out since. It was actually a lot lot better than what we had in mind!
Read up wiki’s write-up on the PyongYang chains, and on Okryugwan.
Wasn’t all too hard to find the place, thanks to G’s GPS. Key in 25.257277,55.32696 which is the coordinates for Jaseena Trading. When you get there you won’t miss it – you’ll see really pretty korean ladies in red dresses all looking out the glass doors. Head in and they’re all really friendly. Place reminds me of just another nice chinese restaurant ay, to be honest.
Now – food! Maybe because we were all of chinese-descent, but the food was actually really really good. Portions are big – try the steamed beef ribs (it’s cooked with hung zhao, turnips, dashed with sesame and some really hot chilli pieces), Chicken pieces with BBQ sauce ( you put it in salad leaves + cucumber, mm), bean curd + kimchi sauce, jellyfish starter. I made the mistake of ordering the hot pot (can’t remember the name but it was something really peculiar) – it’s 150AED, massive and so yum but by the time that came out we were all completely stuffed! All in all we had 7 dishes amongst 5 people, bill came to be about 125AED per person including soft drinks, tea, rice. And what’s more…
Around 8:30p they had a show – like a full-on Korean dance/singing show haha. Must have been 5-6 songs, mixture of mandarin and korean. Outfit changes. Guitar, drums, keyboard, smoke machine and all. Just fab!
I’m bringing our next guests there for sure.
On the whole North Korean…thing – you must be wondering… haha – I didn’t dare ask too much ay – we’ve heard that the staff didn’t appear to be allowed to leave the place. There’s signs stating that you shouldn’t take photos. Funny things like that you know. So don’t be an smart arse and ask the ladies if they’re on Facebook or something when you go 🙂
Saying all that, our dear HRH Sheikh Mohammed and the dashing Hamdan has been there – there are photos on the wall of them with the staff! When was the last time you went to an eatery that showed that? 🙂
- Pyongyang Okryu-gwan
- 04 298 1589
- Google maps location – Al Rigga Street, Karama, Dubai
Interesting read-ups on it: