Gangnam Station sashimi dinner with draft beer: Damiseon

A partitioned sashimi restaurant near Gangnam Station for group dinners

This time, I went to Gangnam for the first time in ages and picked Damiseon Gangnam Station Branch (다미선 강남역점) for dinner!! I tried it just once, and it was so good I could become a regular for life, seriously.

Damiseon Gangnam Station Branch is just a one-minute walk from Exit 5 of Gangnam Station. But if you use the Climate Card, the Shinbundang Line is not included, so head out Exit 7 and walk straight! (That was me...)

Damiseon has quite a different atmosphere from a typical sashimi restaurant: all the partitions make it feel fairly private, and there are long rows of seats in the middle that are perfect for group dinners!! Further inside, there is also a room-like space that is nice for hosting people.

We had booked ahead, and right on time they set out salad, corn salad, and aged kimchi pickled in plum extract!! It really seemed like they had prepared it to our timing, because the corn salad was warm haha.

The basic full table set and Sapporo draft beer

The menu was set up like this, and after wondering what to get, we chose the basic full table set because it had a great variety and seemed reasonably priced!! It includes steamed egg, clear soup, sashimi, gently cooked seafood, fried shrimp, grilled Pacific saury, and fish-bone soup!!

I spotted Sapporo draft beer on the menu, so I ordered some because it made me think of Japan!! Actually, on the day we returned from Japan, we had ordered draft beer at another restaurant to compare, then lamented that it did not have that smooth Japanese taste. But here at Damiseon, it was genuinely as smooth as Japanese draft beer!! For a moment, I thought I had gone back to Japan lol.

Thick sashimi and tender cooked seafood

Then came the sashimi and gently cooked seafood first! The sashimi included red sea bream, large flounder, and seasonal fish, while the cooked seafood was arranged prettily along the side!!

The gently cooked seafood came with sea cucumber, abalone, octopus, and sea snail. It was my first time trying sea cucumber, and it felt like the ocean aroma spread right through me. The abalone, octopus, and sea snail were all so tender too—how do they make them without even a hint of toughness?! And what really won over my taste buds was the soy-marinated shrimp! Usually any soy-marinated shrimp is so salty that my ears hurt, but theirs must have had the saltiness dialed way down: it was not salty at all, and my ears did not hurt!! So fascinating haha.

Next came the baekhap-tang (clear clam soup) and steamed egg! As you can see, the soup was loaded with scallions, making it so refreshing and spicy that it would make short work of a bottle of soju all by itself!! The steamed egg was wonderfully fluffy too haha.

We tried all sorts of sashimi and seafood, and as I said earlier, the seafood was incredibly tender. The sashimi was cut thick, so it was wonderfully chewy, and everything was so delicious!! Honestly, it was the best sashimi I have had in a while.

Crispy grilled fish and fried dishes, finished with fish-bone soup

Just as we were getting close to finishing all that delicious food, the grilled Pacific saury and fried shrimp arrived!! The saury was so crispy and tender. My boyfriend does not usually eat grilled fish, but he raved about how delicious it was; the fried shrimp were crispy outside and soft inside, and we both raved that this place does fried food well too.

Just when we were wishing for more fried food, in came fish-bone soup to ease that regret!! The soup immediately made us want rice, so we ordered a bowl! It came with salted squid, seasoned seaweed, and kimchi too!! Even the salted squid was delicious, wow.

And for the true, true last course, they even gave us maki rolls! Even I, someone who does not eat wasabi, thought the wasabi tasted good, and the flying-fish roe popping inside the maki was like fireworks. It was the day of the fireworks festival, and there was a fireworks festival going off in my mouth too—bang bang~

I was still sad about the fried food, so we decided to keep this feeling going and ordered extra fried squid too!! Hahaha. The owner had been happily watching us enjoy our meal, and since we kept ordering only Chamisul, the owner said Byeolbit Cheongha would suit fried squid better and gave us a bottle on the house...! I mean, the food was already delicious, and then this service too!! So happy~~ We wrapped up with crispy, tender fried food and Byeolbit Cheongha, then went home practically dead... hehe. If you come to Gangnam, I really hope you make a point of visiting this gem at least once!!