By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
One might know them as ''donburi,'' but Koreans know them as ``deopbap,'' or steaming white rice topped with a variety of ingredients.
Noda Bowl located in Garosugil or tree-lined street, in Sinsa-dong, southern Seoul, serves delicious fusion fare on rice in smart tableware.
A representative dish is pork deopbab, which is capped with sliced pork, finely shredded onions and scallions.
The pork spiced special soy sauce is juicy and chewy with an aroma of charcoal fire, well matching the onions.
The seafood rice bowl dish is spicy, maybe hot enough to burn the mouths of those susceptible to spices, with octopus, shrimp, mushroom and bean sprouts bamboo added.
If you want something sweet and salty, the roasted spam and omelet on rice is a good choice.
The Italian fusion deopbab with eggplant and melted mozzarella cheese based on tomato sauce is not recommended personally due to the sour and plain flavor despite the fresh and affluent ingredients.
Izakaya menus, similar to side dishes for drinks, will boost savor and refreshment of cold sake to quench thirst. Hot sake also goes well with side dishes to warm up a body in the chilly Autumn days which suddenly visited here.
Soft tofu and crispy lettuce salad with miso sesame dressing offers a sour and poignant taste.
Soft fried egg rolls with home-made honey mustard dressing also well match the crystal clear rice wine or fruit drink of omija, five flavor berry, and sansuyu, the fruit of Japanese cornel, fermented in bamboo.
In eateries here, it is not easy to taste ginger ale but Noda Bowl offers home-made ginger ale with strong fragrance and acridity of the brown root, which ready-to-drink beverages cannot mimic.
The shop is named after its head chef Noda, an acclaimed food stylist, who is now leading food consulting company, Noda plus.
He fell in love with Japanese food when studying management in Tokyo.
While working part time in an opulent restaurant serving Japan's traditional dining, he was encouraged to introduce the neighboring country's taste, including deopbab or donburi in Japanese.
Deopbab is priced between 8,000 won and 12,000 won and izakaya menus priced 4,000-20,000 won.
It is open from 11:30 a.m. through 12 a.m. except for Sundays and often closes after lunch time when it runs out of ingredients, so it is necessary to check in advance whether it is available or not via phone (02-515-9634).
To find the restaurant, go along the right side of Garosugil in Sinsa-dong and turn right at the second byway. Noda Bowl is in front of Buccella, a well-known sandwich shop.