DOZO

Profile

Address:    台北市大安區光復南路102號1樓
                   No. 102, GuāngFù South Rd, Da-an District

       
Phone #:    02-2778-1135
Website: http://www.dozoizakaya.com/

Price Range:   $$$$

Accepts Credit Cards: yes

Attire: casual

Good for kids: no

Take out: yes
Waiter Service: yes
Outdoor seating:  no
Alcohol: yes

Rating

Food Quality: 4 out of 5
Decor:  4 out of 5
Service: 4 out of 5
Overall: 4 out of 5
Recommendation: Good place for drinks, pricey array of Japanese Cuisine.

Review

Near the Sun Yat Sen Memorial MRT station, there is a trendy Izakaya called Dozo. They serve an assortment of Japanese cuisine from sushi to yakiniku. A lot of their items do not seem very traditional, but a modernized twist of Japanese fare. It will also take a couple dollars to fill yourself up, since their menu items are quite pricey as the quantity of each dish is quite small. Three pieces of nigiri will run you around 300 NT. And six skewers of meat will run you 340. Yet, if you can afford the cost, Dozo offers a sleek modern space to enjoy intriguing cocktails over some snack-type foods. They also offer a small selection of original desserts that are delicious and well-presented.

When you walk in you feel like you've been transported to a shadowy forest. The lighting is set very low, and without the aid of flash or usage of slow shutter speeds, it would be hard to capture images within the store. The restaurant seems exclusive and there are lots of servers to take care of you, but even then it seemed like you had to flag down the service staff instead of them checking up on you periodically. The interior design was intentionally modern, and even the restroom was set up as a space to impress the consumer with their ingenuity. But, I thought they went over board witht their long pipe sinks, since the waterflow was very inefficiently slow and took patience to thoroughly wash your hands.

The lighting of the interior is not so bright, the shutter speed of the camera was set slower to capture what would be a dark space illuminated by that fiber optic vase. The lighting makes even the closest tables seem far apart, and the trendy ambient music in the background acts as a cohesive for the decor, food, and staff.
The decor and the staff were pretty good, but the food would be disappointing if you were looking for classic unadulterated Japanese food. This place is ideal for a few drinks over interesting modern renditions of Japanese food. I forgot to take a picture of the skewer combo, but it was just an okay chicken skewert, beef slice wrap skewer, and mushroom skewer combo. Nothing out of the ordinary, and very sparse portions.

The uni at this place is served with a small mound of rice placed on top of a piece of deep-fried edible leaf. You are recommended to consume this as a whole, but the oily crispy leaf did not really pair well with the uni, so I opted to get the rice and uni separate witht he leaf. The playing is very intricate and pretty, but there was not a lot of uni for the price of 300 NT. I would expect at least two mounds of uni, but they seemed to get away with splitting one piece of uni threeway. The sea urchin was not particularly buttery fresh, but was smooth enough and did not have a trace of bitterness to it.

 This is a bacon wrapped rock cod skewer with baby asparagus. Everything goes well with bacon, and the lard really flavored the otherwise bland rock cod. The cod was sinewy and had a stringy texture to it, so it added more substance to the bite. The asaparagus was lightly grilled and served as a nice intermission between each chunk.

 This dish is the rolled pork, shrimp, and asaparagus with mushroom sauce. The rolls come on a heated plate which is then doused with the mushroom sauce that caramelizes around the bottom of each roll, flavoring each roll suffeciently well. The mushroom taste was pronounced, but the meat inside was hardly discernable.
I was not too sure that there was pork and shrimp, but I felt the pasty texture of it's compound and a vague meatiness. The taste is complex within the roll, but the mushroom sauce kind of dominates everything.

 This next this is the chawan mushi (Steamed Egg in Tea Cup). It was flavorful and not unlike other places that serve this dish. The ingredients they used were not too exotic or extraordinary, but it was a good cup of egg to help fill the stomach with.

 Their desserts were more impressive than their actual entrees. This is the Dozo Tiramisu. They have an extravagant plating with the word DOZO stenciled out using powdered sugar. The Dozo Tiramisu is a light tiramisu cake wrapped in mochi and topped with a sprinkling of powdered sugar, coffee powder, and matcha powder. The tiramisu, like most Taiwanese tiramisu, was not very heavy on the liquer, but it was more sweet and coffee flavored. The mochi made it and interesting item to chew, and the powder helped add a little extra flavor.

 This is a side few showing the layers of the cake. It is not very coffee mousse heavy, but more creamy and mochi. In fact, if they did not tell you it was a tiramisu, you would think it was a giant mochi ball until you bit into it revealing a hidden cake. I was quite pleased with this dessert.

 Being a fan of creme brulee, I enjoyed this egg-shell miniature creme brulee dessert. The amount was too miniscule to satisfy, but it the custard itself was thick, rich, and creamy. They did not really caramelize the sugar on top, but just lightly torched it. I am a fan of Uni-President Egg Pudding since my early childhood, so anything that resembles or is close in taste to that would be easily acceptable to me. Dozo offered something surpassingly elegant and complex in taste and texture, so if you ever drop by, don't forget to top your meal off with their cheapest dessert on the menu. Overall, this place wouldn't be my choice for a classic Japanese meal full of large amounts of nigiri or sashimi. This place is for impressing people with the store's trendy atmosphere, modern Japanese cuisine, and selection of well-mixed alcoholic beverages.