On the coldest week of the year, I walked into the steamy-windowed Damgeuda, on Haverhill’s Washington Street. Loosely translated from Korean, damgeuda means to immerse. Other translations: to bathe; to steep; to pickle. Anyone even remotely familiar with the food of South Korea might find this term apt. The national dish of Korea is kimchi, a traditional banchan—or side dish—made from pickled Napa cabbage, or cucumber, or daikon radish. The fermented vegetables, mixed with salt, ginger, gochugaru, garlic, and shrimp paste, are stored in a traditional earthenware onggi for days to weeks until they are ready to eat.
At Damgeuda, which opened in November, patrons can have kimchi, of course, and plenty more. Husband-and-wife team Walter Gorrell and Yu Gin Kim—herself a native of Seoul, South Korea—have arrived in Haverhill via Denmark, San Francisco, and South Korea. (The couple met in 2016 in Somerville, while working at Tasting Counter; they also worked at Gloucester’s Talise.)
Photographs by Anthony Tieuli
The 23-seat restaurant, with its blond wood tables and 7-seat countertop that faces the open kitchen, is reminiscent of an omakase-style restaurant. Guests can opt to sit at the bar and watch the chefs perform right before them, in an operation that is both compressed and synchronized.
A slim menu currently offers eight items (one is a dessert), as well as five banchan, though it will change frequently, Gorrell says. “Sometimes there may be more or less,” he says. We might have two sweet items, too; there is no concrete formula. It will always be a smaller menu with a focus on vegetable dishes, though.” My own meal began with the house soft tofu, a chickpea tofu topped with chili crisp and served with strips of nori and everything-seasoned crackers on the side, for scooping.
From there, a parade of dishes: lemon preserve turnips, braised to fork-tender and served over a leek purée with candied sunflower seeds. Dubu jorim, cubes of tofu braised in chili crisp and served with strips of crispy, dehydrated mushrooms. Potatoes glazed in spicy gochujang and served beneath snappy, crackling chicken skin. A warming, tender bowl of chicken mandu, the South Korean comfort food, dumplings. Stuffed with ground meat, they arrived in a vibrant kale pesto and beneath a dusting of house herb cheese and crispy garlic.
The so-called Caesar salad was anything but. Using late-bloom kale from Haverhill’s Late Bloom Farm (the farm supplies seasonal produce), this umami-rich salad harnessed the spice and depth of flavor of gochujang once again, as well as the richness of cured egg yolk. Croutons came in the form of nurungji, or traditional scorched rice cakes. But the final course was the piece d’resistance: the jokbal, or Korean five-spice braised pork shank, cooked so soft that it required neither knife nor fork; chopsticks served it just fine. Cabbage, house mustard, and two long shishito peppers, varying in spiciness, offered textural counterpoints.
Before I get to dessert, I should speak briefly about the beverages. Damgeuda has no liquor license, or not yet (its owners are working on it, they say, and intend to offer a small menu of beer, wine, cocktails, and sake from Farthest Star Sake). For now, guests can order a series of off-beat non-alcoholic selections. On the whip-cold evening that I stumbled in, a barley tea was in order, earthy, a little muddy, hot enough to scare away anything that might be lurking in the corners of the bleak, black night.
The restaurant also offers burdock chai tea (made from burdock root); cucumber, lime, and hibiscus soda; and sparkling water. The soda syrups, Gorrell says, are made from a traditional Korean method known as “cheong.” Produce is soaked in sugar and then the sugar is extracted, yielding a flavored syrup. “We usually use this for byproducts to fully utilize the ingredients and minimize waste,” he says. “One of our goals is to be as responsible as possible in terms of generating waste.”
Like the rest of the menu, the beverage list is small and considered, a reflection of the broader ethos of meaningful choices. This isn’t a place to get everything and everything, but, rather, to get a few things prepared with precision. To that end, there is a single dessert on the menu, an inadequately argued “carrot cake.” One might leap, immediately, to the conclusion that this is a traditional American cake, with carrots grated in, with ginger and nutmeg for seasoning. But no, no. This sesame cake arrives at the titular carrot from the vegetable that is layered right on top, late-bloom, poached in milk and caramelized until tender. “We combine the cooked carrots and caramelized milk and bake the sesame cake in a style similar to tarte tatin,” Gorrell says. A quenelle of whipped cream finishes the meal. And then, off you go, into the night. Haverhill never had it so good.