Dong Hae Korean Grill and Sushi

We went there with a big party of 12. Our server was nice, but slow service. We were there for 2 hours and our food was still coming out from the first order of all you can eat… Don’t do all you can eat! The portions were so inconsistent. One friend had a good small bowl of fried rice for an all you can eat, but then the other friend had a regular menu size bowl! Some all you can eat items are full size! For example, seafood pancake (by the way was too thick), and the black bean noodles. Also, don’t get the kimbap there. It’s not real kimbap. They use tomago and no pickled radish. Another downfall of the kimbap is, it was huge! It’s double the size of a regular kimbap you would get at another restaurant.
Pros, you get a good amount of banchan, bibimbap was really good, and beef bulgogi was well marinated. I would definitely go there again, but for the regular menu. The only hard part is, whatever you order, it might be authentic Korean food or it might not be.

We love Korean food and didn’t know about this restaurant until recently. Had a hankering for Bibimbap, so we stopped on the way to a Gopher’s game at the U of M. The food was great! Perfectly cooked with lots of crispy rice at the bottom of the pot. We also shared a shrimp tempura appetizer which was crispy and fresh. The side dishes were plentiful and refilled upon request. It’s a nice large space. There is FREE lot parking in the back – fairly rare in downtown Minneapolis. We ordered pinot by the glass, and the first glass had turned bad. I told the waiter, so he and the manager brought us glasses from a newly opened bottle and told us the wine was on the house. Very nice and unprecedented in my experience! Prices were reasonable also. We didn’t try the sushi. We will definitely return.

The Korean food here is the best/​most authentic in the Twin Cities, IMO. If you’re going to come to Minneapolis for sushi, why would you come to a Korean restaurant? There are better sushi options in the Minneapolis area for sushi to be honest. If you come here for sushi and are disappointed, that’s your own fault. Haha.
There is a free parking lot next to the building for the restaurant. It looks like you can’t park there but there are signs.
Now: If you’re hankering for Korean comfort and staple foods, this is the place to go. Their soondubu (tofu soups– they have diff varieties!) is delicious and perfectly seasoned. Ask for the raw egg on the side (or not at all if that’s your thing) otherwise it’ll be completely cooked in the soup and be a big hardboiled chunk of egg by the time it gets to you. The seafood is my favorite. I get this almost every other time I am here. It’s a huge portion and could feed two (or one extremely hungry person but you’ll probably be very full)! It comes with a side of rice.
I love their dokbokki (I don’t know how it’s spelled), which is chewy little rice cakes and fish cakes in a thick spicy sauce. Mmmm! So good.
They also have a spicy seafood noodle soup (jjambong). The noodles are thick and bouncy (not soggy) and the seafood mix is plentiful and the spice level is perfect!
I won’t go into their entire menu (the above mentioned are my favorite dishes here) but their other dishes and noodle soups and appetizers are legit. Very good. I haven’t been disappointed yet.
The only reason why I give it 3 (3.5 really) stars and not 5 is because the service is extremely slow. And only maybe 1 out of 4 servers speak English, so if you have a problem it can be hard to resolve. Although lately, I noticed they have added more younger, English speaking servers so it’s gotten better, and servers are nice and good but service is still slow. Not sure why?
Also, they have a really strict and limited AYCE option. We had a huge 20+ group celebration and they literally split us up into separate tables because some people wanted AYCE and some of us wanted items off the menu. Just a warning if your party is large.
But good Korean food is worth it if you’re not in a hurry nor particularly going with a huge party.
And again: If you want to be impressed, don’t order sushi. It’s not bad but it’s pretty mediocre for its pricing. Haha.

Food is fantastic but I gave it a rating of 3 stars because of the service we received the last time we dined as a large group of 10. We went around 2 hours before they closed and we all paid $ 30 for the all you can eat dinner option. Only 1 server and he didn’t get all of our orders correctly. There were 3 main dishes we wanted to try which were the sweet and sour pork, the fried fish and something else I can’t recall, but we ordered, it never came out and I told the server to double check why it wasn’t being brought out. after he checked, he said they were out of the fish and he never put in the order for the other 2. other than that, I enjoyed the meal.
Fried chicken was delicious with a nice spicy sauce, chicken bolgogi was best I’ve ever tried, but you do have to request for banchan and rice… which I don’t understand, it should be brought out with every meal.
Black bean noodles are not tasty. The spicy rice cakes are delicious too, but I wish the spicy sauce wasn’t watered down.

Their price does not match up with their food… The worst part of the restaurant is the lady who sits at the register (maybe she is the boss). She has one of the worst cashier I have seen so far in the area. She gave me some ugly looks when we told her that we wanted to split up our tickets and in the end, she even messed up our bill!!! (we only gave her 4 credit cards-​_​-​)

I’m not a very seasoned Korean food eater, but I didn’t think that anything here was that special. Some of the food was good, but for the most part I felt like it was pretty «meh»… But again, I don’t really have a ton to compare to. You can definitely eat a LOT if you come for the all you can eat.
I would definitely not suggest getting the nigiri/​sashimi pieces… There were some very strange cuts of the fish coming out. Also, I had ordered nigiri, and they brought out sashimi. The rolls were better.
I ordered tea, and it came out luke warm. I asked if I could get another tea… And it came out slightly warmer… Tea needs to be hot.

Dong Hae sells both korean food and sushi. They sell AYCE sushi during lunch and dinner, but it’s ridiculous and not worth it. I didn’t try it. but looking at the menu and food. it looks terrible. It is so restrictive… it charges gratuity for groups of 4 or more. seriously? only 1 and ½ hour time limit, Only can order 1 specialty roll at a time. The specialty rolls don’t even seem special. Sashimi — only 2 orders at a time. and a lot more other rules… Please just go to Kyoto sushi or something. no stupid restrictions like they have here.
I came here with a group of friends after purchasing tickets for Kobe’s last game at Target Center. We were planning on going to Red Cow but one of our friends didn’t want burgers and wanted Asian food. We ended up stumbling into this restaurant on our way to Red Cow. Boy was that a mistake.
Now onto the food… I ordered the spicy noodle soup and my other friends ordered spicy soft tofu soup and spicy beef soup. The spicy noodle soup is also known as champong. The presentation was nice, but taste wise. not that great. There was lots of octopus, a crab leg, shrimp, and a mussel. It’s not disgusting. but not that good. The noodles were alright, good chewy level, soup was just salty and a little spicy, not super flavorful.
My girlfriend got the tofu soup and it sucked. terrible. The tofu was ok, but soup lacked flavor. it was neither spicy not salty. it taste like water. This is not how tofu soup should be. It’s terrible. I’m never going to try tofu soup in Minnesota again! They put an egg in there for you but it’s fully cooked. I like the option where you put it in, allowing you to control how well you want the yolk.
In addition, they also give some side dishes ranging from kimchi, daikon, bean sprouts, fish cake, and more. They tasted ok, I’ve had worse, but nothing special. It was nice they allowed refills and were pretty generous.
Lastly.onto the service. It was forgettable to say the least. They only had 1 waitress that served everyone during lunch. Granted, it wasn’t super busy. only maybe 8 tables seated. but service was slow. We were given menu by the owner and grabbed our own seats. We sat there looking through the menu but no waiters/​waitresses came to attend us. 10 minutes later, we were just sitting there with no water or utensils. We had to call the waitress over and only then did she realize she was suppose to wait us. There’s some miscommunication there that needs to be fixed. Lastly, the owners gave us our bills. We wanted to split the check, so one of us went up to tell her which ones to charge which card, but the Korean lady still had trouble and ended up charging the wrong stuff to the wrong card. She was quite rude and not helpful.
Overall this place was terrible. Don’t come here for korean or sushi.

We used to get sushi at this location when it used to be called Nami, (I think) under different management. Loved the location, décor, size of the restaurant etc. However, I was disappointed at my recent visit here. It was extremely bright which pretty much ruined the visit. So I’d say don’t go for date night as the ambience is now gone. The sushi was decent and our server was really nice. We ordered a bottle of wine which they ended up not having in stock. Wasn’t a horrible experience but doubt we will go back anytime soon.

Huge restaurant. Really hard to find an Asian restaurant in this mill city. It’s so huge that they got many empty spots.
The food is not bad. The bimbibap got a good amount of rice crisps at the bottom.
The Galbi short rib Jim was too fatty. It’s huge So I asked for a knife to cut it the ribs. They said they don’t have a knife. Seriously? A restaurant doesn’t have knife? This dish is too sweet. I like they put dates in it but it could have been less sweet and stew longer to get a softer rib.

An out of town friend wanted Korean and this being downtown and open, we thought it was a reasonable choice. We also heard about the dinner all-​you-​can-​eat for $ 30 that seemed like a good idea at the time. Those that know me would understand the restaurant usually comes out losing when they put me in these situations. But let me tell you — there are RULES for the all-​you-​can-​eat. And kalbi is NOT one of those edible items. Seeing that we were coming the full intention of an all-​you-​can-​eat-​face-​stuff-​fest decided to go for it despite all the red flags.
From what I can remember of the rule book, you can only order one plate per person at a time. The next plates cannot be ordered until the current plate is done. There is a time limit in which you must have your plates ordered (maybe an hour? I forget), that includes the time it takes for them to cook and serve you. Realistically, you can probably get 3 – 4 dishes per person unless you are literally inhaling them as they are served.
The food is actually about 4-​stars or better and the service was excellent. The bulgogi was flavored perfectly and came in an incredible portion size. My favorite was the grilled mackerel that was done perfectly. The sashimi was excellent as well. All this in the ambiance of drunk Korean men singing karaōke in the background. Perfect.
They should just get rid of the all-​you-​can-​eat option altogether because of how poorly it is presented and executed. Overall it soured an otherwise good experience. I’ll probably be back for another try.

We’ve had nothing but good food from Dong Hae. Have eaten here in person for dinner and just ordered Bite Squad delivery. Kimchi Stew, Bulgolgi, and Glass Noodles with Veggies are our favorites. Delivery comes with banchan (the complimentary side dishes) of potatoes, kelp, fish cake, kimchi, bean sprouts and cucumber. Glass Noodles with Veggies is definitely large enough for 2 meals. Kimchi soup comes with some sliced rice cake and is slightly spicy– very delicious! Will be ordering delivery from here again and again! Additionally, the restaurant itself is very nice inside. Great date night atmosphere, which is very different from most other Korean restaurants in the TC.

Great food for little money. I had the spicy soup and it will cure ailments you did not even know you had. They have sushi and I am sure it’s good. But I love Korean food. The menu items are traditional Korean, so don’t be surprised if you are the only Caucasian in there. (Always a good sign in my book). Check it out.

Because I love Korean food, Dong Hae, I just can’t even.
This is the sweetest Korean food I’ve ever had. I do not care if Minnesota spicy is nothing, asking a customer how spicy they want their food is not difficult. Food was slapped onto a plates without control. The worst offense? Soggy rice!!!
The level of carelessness towards the food was sad, and while it might have been a (horrifyingly) off day, there really are enough Korean restaurants to make Dong Hae irrelevant in MSP.
P.S.
Plus one star for the ojingeochae muchim side dish.

The constant need of quality Korean food in the Twin Cities is only made worse by the fact that city or state ordinances (specifics unknown by me) don’t allow grills at the tables, thus preventing the Korean BBQ experience. That said, there are a few Korean places around the cities, and I make it a point to try all of them.
Donghae has by far the most visually appealing set up of the Korean restaurants, not that there is much competition, but the place looks nice, lots of seating and great décor. It was very clean and the seating was comfy.
The food was… Subpar to me. I ordered bulgogi, my go to dish when trying a new Korean place. My friend had a spicy chicken stir fry dish and we split 2 sushi rolls. My bulgogi was a rather small portion for a rather large price… The meat itself wasn’t that great, kind of stringy and spongy. The marinade was decent, on point, nothing especially unique. The spicy chicken dish was rather gross. The chicken was a very strange texture. It’s hard to describe, but very smooth may be a good place to start. The sauce was decent though, and my friend enjoyed the variety of veggies in the dish along with the rice.
The sushi was good, and well-​priced. We had a crunchy roll and a house roll, by recommendation of our server. They were both excellent and I would order them again. It is slightly strange to me that a Korean restaurant has a full sushi bar, but I’m not complaining.
The side dishes were good… I’ve had a better variety at other places as well as seemingly better quality.
Im not sure I’d eat here again, as I travel often and encounter many better options in other parts of the country to satisfy my KBBQ cravings. However, if you’re looking for a nice, moderately priced dinner downtown, this would be a good option as the sit down is a better experience than any other Korean place.

Omg love this place! I think this place has the best Korean food in town– I tried almost all Korean restaurants in twin cities and this one is my absolute favorite. Even though donghae is very known for their Korean food, they have great Japanese sushi and rolls as well! I’ve been to so many Japanese places that i think I have pretty good judgment, so trust me! their sushi and rolls are much better than others. But their sushi rolls are not always the same– inconsistent. Idk last time I had sushi rolls and the rice was too overcooked and too sticky… :/
I love their all you can eat sushi for dinner– because you can get not only all the Japanese food but also Korean food for $ 30(excluding tax)!
I’m giving 4 star out of 5 even though it is my most fav Korean place just because their sushi rolls are inconsistent!

Service was bad enough to inspire me to make a Unilocal account just for this restaurant.
Pros: pretty looking and quiet place, food tasted good (to my non-​Korean/​Japanese palate).
Cons: horrible service, lots of waiting for sushi, dubious staff, never do the AYCE deal, poor choices in dining music.
My friends and I went to try the all-​you-​can-​eat deal, with the intention of getting a good deal on sushi/​sashimi. This place’s deal was $ 30 for most of the sushi and some menu items, this sounded as good if not better than the usual Kyoto Sushi $ 25 for mostly sushi items (which we usually enjoy and revisit from time to time).
First of all, Dong Hae has a limit on what you can order with the deal. This is quite standard, however, this restaurant has a one-​and-​a-​half hour time limit and its ordering system is incredibly confusing. You get a slip of paper and write what you want, except each roll/​appetizer/​etc. was limited to a small number of orders, you can turn in as many slips as you want, but only after you finished eating one slip’s orders. I am not sure if the way I explained it made any sense as I still have yet to figure out the system (I don’t really plan to, since I’m not going back).
The bigger problems arose when it took about 25 minutes for our first sushi order to arrive, true there was only one sushi chef, but there were about 3 other parties currently at the restaurant (even assuming they were having AYCE). The four of us promptly devoured our 4 pieces of sashimi, two ordinary rolls, and 1 specialty roll (that took 30 minutes to make).
After giving the second slip to the waitress, we decided to order some of the Korean food (included in the AYCE deal). The food was delivered surprisingly fast, however, this time, the sushi took about 35 minutes to arrive (we were bored enough to start timing them). The third time we ordered sushi, it took about 40 minutes. At this point the waitress somewhat apologized for all the waiting and gave us a little time extension although the restaurant was about to close anyway and we ordered a little bit more. Note that the number of people in the restaurant stayed pretty constant (it was pretty much empty).
The waitress was very dubious, almost every time we handed her a sushi slip, she came back telling us we filled it out wrong, never really explaining how to properly fill it out (getting very impatient in the process as well), only telling us to properly read the fine print at the bottom in a rather patronizing tone. Furthermore, every few minutes she came to our table to tell us 10 more minutes until sushi was done (this was only true once). She also kept telling us to order the Korean food from the menu rather than sushi because sushi would take too long. Her intentions were very unclear, we could not tell if she was actually apologizing or strategically distracting us from the sushi.
The food tasted pretty good though, very salty however, I was paranoid this was a strategy to get us to drink more water and therefore eat less sushi.
So overall, during the course of about 1 hour and 50 minutes, we four received about 20 pieces of sashimi, 6 rolls, 4 specialty rolls, 3 – 4 entrees, and a few hundred suspicious apologies from the waitress. This cost us ~$ 154 total because they slapped on about $ 10 tip automatically (at this point we didn’t even argue and just gave up on life).
My experience at Dong Hae made me appreciate Kyoto Sushi so much more: for $ 20~$ 30 (including tip, depending on lunch or dinner), you get your food in under 10 minutes even in a packed restaurant, there is no limit to how much you can order (you can order 50 salmon sashimi at a time), and the waiters do not try to divert you from ordering sushi.
It may also be worthy to note that the restaurant was playing songs straight from what seemed like a college student’s super-​original Spotify playlist, this included songs like Jason Derulo’s «Talk Dirty.» I felt songs like this blemished the atmosphere (although luckily they played the version without 2Chainz), because otherwise the restaurant was pretty nicely lit and fancy-​looking.

I wish Unilocal had a half star system! I would have given this place a 3.5 stars. It was one of those not-​impressive-​but-​not-​bad-​places.
I got the grilled mackerel, which is something that’s hard to mess up in my opinion. It was decent but need some more seasoning. For some reason, I was under the impression that a full fish was coming, so I was a little disappointed when it when a mackerel fillet type of thing.
My Korean friend got the ox bone soup, which she specifically asked the server whether the ox bone soup was boiled over day/​a day/​etc, and the server was a little bit hesitant in answering the question. He ended up saying it was boiled over day. You can tell from the taste of the soup that the broth was not boiled for a long time. It wasn’t as rich as it should be. The beef pieces in it were a little dry — it was alright.
The side dishes were okay, nothing special really. I didn’t like the taste of their kimchi, and I felt like their fish cakes were a little off, but I can’t pinpoint what. Maybe it’s just not as fresh? Not sure.
The waiter was a bit slow and disappears at times… but he was pretty nice overall.
Not sure if I will be back or not since there are other Korean restaurants in town that I want to try! Note that parking is probably crazy before 6pm on a weekday.

I’m from California, so I am used to very fresh seafood wherever I go. Not sure what the negative fuss is about, but this place is actually one of the only places in Minnesota I will eat sushi. The number 9 roll is my FAVORITE! Whenever I come here I will usually get one of the sushi boats (but they are definitely pricey SO split it)!
I absolutely love their Korean food (especially the spicy stews). I’ve never really had an issue with service, but at the same time, (referring to previous review) I’m a person that does not wait 20 mins for a refill. If I have to, (which I do understand as customers we shouldn’t have to do this) I will make it known they are not tending to my table as much as I would like, and like that it’s fixed! Just voice your concern to your server and hopefully they will be able to serve you up to par.
As for the people complaining about the price of the food… it’s Downtown Minneapolis. If you’re looking for a $ 5 meal, go find that in a different part of town.

My first time here. I’ve heard mixed reviews about this place from my friends so I thought I’d give it a try.
Went on a Friday night for dinner. They’ve got girls night here so the drinks are buy one get one free. Out server young me Roth was very nice & hilarious and helpful.
We ordered Gimbap, Haemul pajeon, Bulgogi, Soondubu-​jjigae, & Spare ribs. Everything was delicious and enough to feed the 4 of us. My least favorite item is the Soondubu-​jjigae. Our waitress said it was very popular and it looked delicious in the photo. It tasted VERY fishy and bland. Everything else was cooked to perfection and was full of flavor. The food & sides came out very fast.
We ordered some drinks since it was GNO and drinks were buy one get one. We got the peartini, peach margarita, Miami sunrise, and classic margarita. They were all delicious and they were not shy with the alcohol. The drinks went down smoothly.
I gave this place 3 stars because of how slow the service was. It didn’t appear to be too busy. It took about 20 min for us to get a refill on our waters. We ordered our drinks with our food and our drinks came out halfway thru our meals. It took about 10 min to get spoons for our soup and bowls. We spent a lot of time waiting.
I will come back to this place only bc it’s good Korean food and only about 5 min from my house.

Went here for dinner on a Friday night (9PM). It had a number of large groups eating together, but I was seated quickly and politely by the hostess. The restaurant is large with a lot of different seating areas, each with a different style/​tone. There was house music playing overhead at a low volume, pretty chill.
I sat in the bar/​lounge area. At a glance, it looks well decorated, BUT after awhile, you notice that the black cloth chairs don’t match everything that’s brown in the room. Also, the carpet is nice, BUT it’s stained with old gum stuck to it.
I already knew what I wanted so I placed my order. My nigiri came out in 2 minutes, HOLY MOLY! My dolsot bibimbap came out 15 minutes later. Turns out my ticket got stuck to a previous order… weird.
I thought the kimchi and bibimbap were pretty good, nothing to write home about, really. I was excited about the shake toro because I had an amazing sake toro experience in Dallas. I just wanted to relive my dream! SOOO FREAKING DISAPPOINTED! The freshness was only okay, but what really killed was the rice. It was tough and dry, just BLAH. My first nigiri piece was a fatass cut, so I was thinking at least they had that going for them, jackpot! But the other pieces were cut smaller, so mark that off as inconsistent cuts. If you’re going here for unlimited sushi, you’re screwed haha.
The only redeeming quality of this restaurant, contrary to the previous reviews, is the service. I had the best waitress. She made sure I was set up perfectly, had everything I wanted, refilled my kimchi, followed up and rushed my late order. I left to grab something in my car. She noticed my empty seat and brought a bowl to cover the top of my bibimbap either to keep it hot or to prevent it from getting roofied. Either way, awesome gesture!
Here’s what it boils down to:
1. The food is too expensive for its quality. (I’ve had great bibimbap for $ 5, WTF is this $ 14 nonsense. It’s rice vegetables and an egg, nothing about that justifies $ 14).
2. I wouldn’t go here for sushi, ever.
3. I wouldn’t go here for korean food; I’d much rather tofu house for a fraction of the price.