Busan restaurant for spicy cheese cutlet: Deli Donkatsu

After stopping by Haedong Yonggungsa Temple in Busan, I wandered around without a destination. Then I came across a pork cutlet place: Deli Donkatsu (델리돈까스), gleaming with a 4.1 rating on Kakao Map. I tend to trust Kakao Map ratings, so I stopped in.

Deli Donkatsu location and hours

The address is 1F, 146 Songjeongjungang-ro 9beon-gil, Haeundae-gu, Busan, South Korea. Hours are 11:00–20:00, and it is closed on the second and fourth Fridays of the month.

A Western-style cutlet restaurant with 2000s nostalgia

Oh, perhaps because it calls itself a Western-style Korean restaurant, the place definitely had that cozy early-2000s feeling. Songs from when I was little kept playing. It felt like a Kim Gun-mo album was on repeat. Eating while listening to nostalgic Kim Gun-mo songs somehow made it taste even better...

The restaurant felt warm overall, yet very neat as well. It was also heartwarming to see them greet every single person coming in and leaving.

Ordering cheese pork cutlet and draft beer

There are five menu items, excluding the large portions. Just seeing such a short menu made me certain this place had to be good. I was considering the Western-style pork cutlet set, but the ordering tablet marked the cheese pork cutlet as Best, so I ordered one along with a 500cc draft beer.

The food was ready faster than I expected.

Kimchi, danmuji (pickled radish), and a morning roll came alongside the pork cutlet. Please do not eat that morning roll plain—check out the recipe for turning it into a pork cutlet burger...! (I will explain with photos below.)

From soup to cheese pork cutlet

Even this soup was full of that nostalgic old-school feeling. The soup was nice, but what really caught my eye was the cute bowl... It felt as though it held the whole mood of this place. It looked almost like a custom-made plate.

And then my cheese pork cutlet appeared. It arrived fried into a tidy square, and even before cutting into it, it seemed absolutely packed with cheese ready to burst from inside. The plate came with rice, macaroni, lettuce, and the cutlet.

The kick from spicy sauce and ttangcho dadaegi

As they brought the food over, they asked whether I wanted spicy sauce and ttangcho dadaegi (a spicy chili pepper relish). I said yes please, and they brought them right out.

I would call this the signature kick of the place.

Of course, it was delicious on its own, but the combination with the spicy sauce and ttangcho dadaegi was especially good.

And it would be a shame to leave out this draft beer. I had it after finishing a business trip to Busan; just one sip felt like it ran straight through my veins...!

Look at the thickness of that cheese...!

My instinct, based on that perfectly square cutlet, had been right. It already felt satisfyingly substantial when I cut into it.

I savored it and savored it again while eating happily, and it really seemed that the spicy sauce and ttangcho dadaegi brought out this cutlet's flavor to the fullest. Refills were available whenever and in whatever amount I wanted, so I piled them on generously.

With such a delicious combination, draft beer, and even Kim Gun-mo songs that I love playing, my body was practically humming on its own. It was a business trip whose final meal satisfied me in every way. I am at the airport waiting for my flight back to Gimpo now, and hmm... it has me thinking I should put even more passion into my work 😂

How to eat it as a morning-roll pork cutlet burger

This is the morning-roll burger I mentioned earlier. Open up the roll, stuff in the pork cutlet, then add lettuce and macaroni. It gives you another whole flavor experience, so please do not eat the bread plain—try it this way...!