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Take their donkas roll, for example. They aren't the first Japanese restaurant to turn donkas into a sushi roll. However, in my experience, they are the first to make sweet sushi rolls enjoyable. Kazumori's donkas roll belongs to a style of roll that I typically avoid. This roll is a colorful harlequin in a carnival of sweet, fruity, neon salad dressings and dyed tobiko (fish roe). It looks more like a dessert than an entrée, and from the first time I ate this style a few years ago, I was turned off by its overpowering sweetness. Who wants a roll that tastes like sweet, ricey, blobby salad dressing? It simply doesn't work with the delicate flavors and soft texture of raw fish, but to my surprise it does work with Kazumori's donkas roll. Donkas has enough greasy, porky flavor to stand up to sweet and sour dressings. Plus it is both meaty and crunchy, adding a variety of firm textures that have much less in common texturally with salad dressing than does a squishy fish.
In addition to the donkas roll, another dish that stood out was the salmon teriyaki. If you google "salmon teriyaki" you get pages of delicious images of salmon steaks, so to be clear, Kazumori's salmon teriyaki is not a teriyaki salmon steak. It is a teriyaki salmon stir fry. This may be a creative twist or merely a labeling error. But either way, it is not just any salmon teriyaki. To be absolutely clear, it is an out of this world salmon teriyaki. The salmon is tender, but not flakey and dry. The veggies are all crisp and fresh. The NetBot went crazy over the mushrooms. And the teriyaki bound all the flavors together in perfect harmony. It was fantastic.
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"I'm confused by it," said the NetBot. "I don't like it. It's not good. What is that? Fake crab meat?"
I tried to give it a chance. Sometimes food gets better the more you eat it. But it wasn't happening.
I will say this at least — it looked good.
Most of what Kazumori serves is really tasty, though. Their sushi was so good we went back the next week just for a salmon, or "yeon-eo," sushi set (연어초밥정식). We even ventured to taste gon-ee (곤이), a mild, buttery, intestine-looking fish-roe that we found at the bottom of our cod soup, daegu-tang (대구탕).
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Kazumori is hard to miss. From Pyeongtaek Station take a bus to Pyeongtaek City Hall. Almost any bus will do, but you can always rely on the 50 or 20 bus which run frequently. Get off the bus in front of Lotte Mart (you'll see the store on your right) and continue by walking down the street. Look across the street when you get to the first intersection. You should see the Christmas lit windows of Kazumori on the second floor of a building across from you, in the building on the right of the Chevrolet/FX Hair building.
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