Tetsu Izakaya 테츠, Gangneung Review

Tetsu is a Japanese style teppan restaurant. A teppan is a style of cooking where they use a flat iron grill to cook food on; it's very common in Japan. There are many teppanyaki restaurants throughout the UK, and I'm sure across the world too. 

I stumbled upon this place when I was looking for the Japanese ramen store. Sadly, that store was closed, so decided to dine here. The restaurant was pretty packed, as you can see in the picture. 

The atmosphere was good, there was a lot of people having fun and chatting amongst themselves. 

Directions 

Tetsu Izakaya is located in Gyo Dong, Gangneung. 

They are located on Haseulla Ro 206 beon gil. 

Opposite the Junior Lab School 주니어랩 스쿨 on google maps. 

I opted to sit at the bar, because it's the best place as you can see your food cooking. Also, you can watch for any unhygienic practices. For some reason, many people prefer to sit on usual tables. I think it's more fun here, and if I spoke Korean, it would have been nice to speak to the chef, too. 

Here's the chef (I assume he was head chef or the boss because of his persona). He looked like he cared about what he was doing. At the time, he was training the other chef in the kitchen, which was really nice to see as we were sitting by the bar. 

The Food

Amaebi tempura. 13,000W

Sweet shrimp tempura. 

I was really disappointed with this dish, as it was basically deep fried, crispy shrimp. No tempura at all! Tempura is a batter the Japanese use to coat food instead of usual batter. It's supposed to be fluffier and crispier. I don't mind eating these, but it wasn't what I was expecting. 

I wasn't sure if you were supposed to peel the heads and shell off, or eat the whole shrimp. I opted for the latter,  because David did. 

Pork yakisoba. 15,000W

The downside of this dish was the cabbage. As you can see from the photo, there wastoo much cabbage for my liking. I understand they want to bulk this dish up, but for 15,000W I expect them to bulk it with meat or other vegetables. It wasn't too bad in the end, as it was  nice and saucy and the egg on top was great. 

Tori Kara age. 15,000W

This was the best dish of the three,   however again the batter used wasn't the right batter. I've had kara age many times, in Japan and other Japanese restaurants but, for some reason, Korean Japanese restaurants make it like regular fried chicken.  The batter is hard, not fluffy at all. It wasn't seasoned, although they did have the and salt on the side.

Then, I watched this abomination. Someone ordered the beef tataki, which is lightly seared beef. 

He sliced the beef, then decided to blow torch it on both sides. The beef was so thin, that it looked overdone. Instead of searing the whole rump, I watched the chef slice it carefully and proceed to do the above. I'm so glad I didn't order it for 20,000W! I would have been totally disappointed. 

Price

Expensive! For the three dishes, a beer and a soft drink, the total came to 51,000won. 

Why are Japanese restaurants worldwide so expensive? Especially for the simplest of dishes? 

The restaurant was packed and the atmosphere was good. 

They do have things like wagyu steak on offer for about 34,000 won. I didn't go for it, as I wasn't sure about the quality. I definitely wasn't impressed with this first and most likely the last visit.