Damso

This little Korean resto on Bute has an interesting menu with some savoury options. The menu isn’t extensive, but there are some gems here like:
— All you can eat chicken wings. They don’t skimp out and give you tiny ones either. 3 flavours and trust me, the hot one is hot.
— Spicy pork. For under 10 bucks you get a skillet of spicy pork and veg, plus bowl of rice. If you aren’t super hungry it’s a great small-​med size dish.
One thing I noticed was that they didn’t serve the traditional Korean side dishes with your meal, you have to order separately. Which is kind of too bad as that’s one of the nice things about eating Korean food.
The thing which surprised me was how much their staff seem to be into food. I noticed the El Buli restaurant books (a very famous Michelin starred restaurant in Spain) on their shelf and asked if I could browse them (I own one of the series). They were really excited to show them all to me. And I could see some of the little details they put into how they present their food might come from inspirations from famous restaurants like that. While El Buli may be a culinary level miles above this small Korean place, it’s nice to see they are experimenting a bit.
Everytime I’m here it seems like a table is digging into the unlimited pork belly. I think that’s my next thing to try.
And they’re open late!

Nice little Korean restaurant right in the middle of downtown near Robson. Good food, decent prices, just nothing really special in terms of Korean cuisine.

My go-​to place for Korean spicy tofu soup. Have tried this in a lot of other places, but I keep coming back. Would also recommend the gamjatang. The broth is full of flavor.

A nice spot. I had the sparerib, potato bowl. Not quite sure what it’s called, but it was really good. Nice and savoury, and not to spicy. The meat was fall off the bone tender. The only problem was that I finished it too fast.
Nice cozy ambiance, and it’s lit really nice.

The beef rib hotpot (don’t recall the Korean name) is incredibly flavourful and succulent. Pair it with a Parallel 49 Jerkface 9000, and you’ll clearly remember how good the meal is many months down the road.

Wandering around downtown late at night so we decided to go Damso for their all you can eat wings. Mistakenly went to the other Damso which doesn’t have this special. This happy hour special is from 2pm-​6pm and 9pm-​11pm. It’s $ 10.99 per person and you must order a drink.
We decided to order a choice of each on their menu. The choices were Kyochon Style (sweet soy & garlic), YangNyum (Sweet & Spicy) and Suiside Spicy (Very very very spicy). The waitress told us that each order had 10 pieces, but when it came it was clearly more than 10 per dish. But we didn’t want to create a hassle and send the excess back (though, if you don’t finish them, you’d have to pay $ 1 per piece). My favorite of the three would have to be Kyochon because I didn’t like the hot sauce they used. The sauce didn’t have any spicy flavor but rather only gives a hot and burning sensation on the tongue and everything it touches. I alternatively ate one Kyochon and one YangNyum wing and that was perfect combination. The Suiside spicy was indeed suicide spicy. Not the kind of spicy I like (as mentioned above). We had a seriously hard time finishing this because our mouth was literally lit on fire. My friend made a special order of salt & pepper dried wings to down the rest of them.
The wings weren’t anything special and if you work it out for $ 22 and we got 40pc. It’s about 50 cent per wing. You might be better off ordering wings at another place where you can order them by piece instead of orders of 10pc and you probably aren’t obliged to purchase a drink.
For drinks, we got the pinacola Makguli. It was pretty good with frozen pineapples in it. Very smooth and yoghurt-​like.
I did take notice when walking out that there is all you can eat pork belly. Nice concept, though, do I really want to eat that much pork belly? I ponder about this till next time.

Quite a rip-​off. I have been to many korean restaurants in downtown but this is one of the worst ones. Ordered a chadol miso soup; barely any meat inside, let alone no side dishes unlike other restaurants! And cost friggin $ 13 just for a small bowl of white sticky rice and a soup that is virtually all miso liquid. You will be better off at Sura, MDG or Jangmojib.

Unlimited Pork Belly!!! You can get this for during their happy hour from 4pm-​6pm. Price is $ 15.99 and includes the pork belly of course, pickled onions, dipping sauce, lettuce, rice, korean beef stew.
First things first, their pickled onion was so good!!! I thought it was going to burn my insides but it didn’t, a little bit sour and sweet, perfect combination to cleanse your palate from time to time. The pork belly. For those wanting to try this unlimited pork belly, it’s not going to be the usual pork belly you get which would be grilled. This one is thickly sliced and deep fried. I would assume it was boiled/​steamed first then deep fried afterwards. Reason for this, they served it way too fast if it were totally deep fried. Also, the tenderness wasn’t there. As expected, it was thickly cut so a little bit tough but don’t worry it wasn’t rubbery. A little more tenderness would’ve been perfect.
For their stew (which was served btw like 10mins before we paid, super late guys!!) it was just okay. The thing is, you don’t want to pay additional for leftovers so we had no choice but to finish off the stew. It was just okay, nothing great too.
So, for those wanting to try this, you can only order for an hour and a half (1.5hrs) before you get charged $ 5 per pork belly. Me and my friend were delighted we tried this one out. I’m a big fan of pork belly and anything fried (yup i know it’s bad), so this review is a 4 star.

One of the many Korean restaurants on Robson, I was curious to try this place after smelling the wonderful aromas walking by at lunchtime
We had the Korean tacos, which were awesome. The bulgogi was really tasty– we actually order another round of it.
The only dish that didn’t really hit the mark was the lettuce wraps. I guess we kind of expected braised pork belly, but it’s served grilled with romaine leaves and some sauces. It was good but not great
Overall the restaurant is worth checking out, but maybe on a Wednesday night I. e not for a special occasion or anything.

We ordered two ramen dishes, and 2 of the Korean beef tacos. The quality of the ramen and just the overall experience of the food was not that good. The beef tacos were okay but really lacked flavour.
There’s a tinsy winsy amount of very very thin beef, the size of a newborn babies hand and noodles that even Mr. Noodles wouldn’t be proud of.

Review for Happy Hour All-​You-​Can-​Eat Chicken Wings:
I’m so shocked that nobody has mentioned this wonderful offer. I haven’t had anything from their regular menu, but I can guarantee that the chicken wings are ace. I know people know about it, because a few other tables were picking away at it. It’s a deal at $ 10.99 for AYCE chicken wings. Mind you, they actually give you full-​sized chicken wings. They are deep fried (not breaded) and tossed in your choice of sauce. The sauces include: honey garlic, sweet & spicy and hot spicy. Each section of the wing is considered a piece, so the drum is one, and the winglet is the other. When they say 10 pieces, they really mean 5 full chicken wings — are you making any sense of this?
It’s a Happy Hour type deal in the afternoon and late night (9:00 PM — Close). The deal is only valid with a drink purchase. There is also a 1.5 hour dining time limit, which is very reasonable. The servers do not hesitate to offer you more wings. I must have had something like 30 pieces, or 15 wings, that night. Try the honey garlic. It’s really good. Note: the hot spicy is 911 spicy!
The more you know. Chicken wings for everybody!

The soondubu I had was decent.
Side dishes cost extra, and the kimchi is not very good.
The menu is very limited for a Korean restaurant, but on the plus side they open until 1am.

If the review was based solely on food it would have zero star. We ordered chicken wings and when they arrived, we tried four of them and they were all not cooked through. We quickly notified the server and server did apologize. We ordered the small size bbq pork belly and lettuce wrap, they upgraded it to large as a courtesy. We also ordered pork bulgogi and that was very disappointing too.
I guessed we should have walked down a bit more to eat at Sura instead.

Just been there yesterday. We made a reservation for 6 people but at 7pm, The peak hour for dinner, the place was empty and it stayed pretty much empty until we left. There is a reason for that emptiness.
My friends wanted to try some Korean food but I had no idea which one is a good one although I am Korean-​Canadian. I looked up Golden Plate list and saw Damso on Denman Street as one of the best Korean food so we decided to try there. We were going to go there then I saw this location on Bute so we just decided to try this one as it was closer to everyone.
We ordered Kimchi Stew, Spicy Pork Bulgogi, QuackQuack Duck Poutine and Ddok Bokki. What a disappointment :(
Definitely doesn’t worth the money in taste and portion!!!
Kimchi Stew: Small portion of kimchi and overall amount. It was blend and had some rice cake as a filler. It was quite pretty bad in flavour.
QuackQuack Duck Poutine: Small portion again. It was a nice-​try-​wannabe fusion but it had that yucky duck smell and tasted blahhhh.
Ddok Bokki: Holy Cow. This dish did not worth the money at all. I would have paid $ 1 for it. Tiny portion with blend taste of dish and I can confidently say it was THE WORST Ddok Bokki in my life.
Spicy Pork Bulgogi: Not bad but again small portion.
I kind of felt embarrassed that I showed my friends in this Korean restaurant because now they will think all Korean food tastes horrible like this one.

Very good Korean ra-​man but I prefer the Japanese ra-​man serve a few blocks over. Funky designed restaurant downtown Vancouver.

So I read other reviews and someone said to avoid the soups. I may have to agree on that for the pork bone soup lunch but the spicy ramen was decent. Given the abundance of Korean restaurants, this place didnt really do it for me. One big no-​no is to charge $ 2 for tea! The price of the pork bone soup at $ 10 wasn’t a great deal either. And, you got no side dishes to complement the meal. Maybe this is targeting a different clientele, but for me, I’d rather go to Norboo or Red Chicken where yhe tea is free and the food tastes better. I give this place one thing though, there was a lot of meat on the pork bones. But it comes down to flavor and this place didn’t measure up.

This place has some REALLY good food, and some dishes that are just OK.
The Korean tacos and pork ribs are terrific. Very good flavour and done well. I sat on their patio in the summer and had those tacos. It was heaven.
I have tried 2 different soups on 2 different occasions, and didn’t enjoy either very much. One was overly hot (and I like spicy food) without a lot of flavour, and kind of light on meat. The other was OK but sort of bland. Not terrible overall, but I wouldn’t get them again.
Service is good. Overall, food is great, but I don’t recommend the soups.

I’ve visited the original Damso many times. but it was always just a bit too far
So when I heard they opened a new one, closer to home, it was great news
Really nice tables, atmostphere, and a cool patio for the summer months
Ordered the Kalbee BBQ short ribs (50%0ff), and it didn’t fail to impress. My friend ordered the Osso Buco. he really enjoyed it, but prefered mine!
They still need to get their liquor license, but once they do, they will be a hit

Went to try this new place for dinner and it was pretty good, no major complaints.
The tacos were delicious and the mains were great. The menu is just one page, but maybe they’ll add more things later on.
Would definitely try this place again once we see more items on the menu.

Yay! I’m a fan.
Tried this place out with a friend for lunch on a weekday. I was looking for a noodle soup type of lunch and this was the first place we came across in our walk.
We tried their beef taco ($ 1.99/each), noodle soup with beef ($ 6.99), and beef something that is served with a bowl of rice ($ 8.99).
First off, REALLY good value. They give you a generous portion of everything. Even their taco had more than enough beef filling. The only thing I don’t get is their «marked down» prices. The prices on the menu say for example, «$ 16.99» that is crossed through and an $ 8.99 next to it. Very strange.
Second, very good flavours. The tacos were EXCELLENT and I think next time I might just order 3 of those for lunch. The noodle soup was good, but extremely garlicky. The noodles were freshly made and had an excellent texture and bounce to it. My friend had the beef something with rice and it was beef that was advertised to have boiled for over 48 hours — we could tell! It was very tender for the pieces of brisket and tendon.
Overall, can’t wait to come back. My only warning to this place is that their menu is not very vegetarian friendly and the service can be a bit slow (but otherwise friendly).