About - Donblanc Sanjose
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Amenities and More
Offerings
- Alcohol
- Beer
- Cocktails
- Comfort food
- Late-night food
- Small plates
- Vegetarian options
Accessibility
- Assistive hearing loop
- Wheelchair accessible entrance
- Wheelchair accessible parking lot
- Wheelchair accessible restroom
- Wheelchair accessible seating
Atmosphere
- Casual
Top Reviews
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The staff is friendly and quickly steps in to help grill the meat, making the whole experience smooth and easy. The meat is good quality — well-marinated and tender. They also serve generous portions of large intestine, which is a nice touch many places skip. Overall, it’s one of the stronger Korean BBQ options in San Jose. The only improvement would be offering more variety in banchan sides. I’ll definitely return next time I’m craving Korean BBQ
Donblanc takes a swing at South Bay's Korean BBQ scene with a comprehensive comfort food intermixed with supposedly premium meat. They try to deliver 10 Butchers or Chungdam-level quality at a more relaxed and reasonable price, also going strong with Korean drinking culture. The succeed in this mission to a certain degree but there are some serious questions. The interior is a bit weird and it feels like they inherited the setup from the previous establishment. I love the fact that there is a butcher freshly cutting the beef and pork but he's behind a "bar" counter. Clearly it wasn't designed to show off the butcher or fresh meat cutting. The highlight of the food was everything but the meat. The banchan was of high quality. We loved their pajeon pancakes. The corn-cheese is a Korean comfort food classic that you really can't mess up. And even the cold noodles were amazing. So far so good. The major disappointment was with the BBQ. We had the American Wagyu ribeye. Really you can't go wrong here as long as you use fresh meat of the right grade. And they do, except, the meat is completely without salt or flavor. Yes, yes, we know we are supposed to dip it in oil and salt but somehow, this just didn't work as the meat was perhaps too thick(?) and we couldn't get the bland inside to work well with whatever we dipped the meat with. We felt like great meat was going to waste and I couldn't help I could prepare this steak in a more tasteful way. Also, the marinated pork neck was again bland and flavorless. This one, the pork itself was a bit tough but more worrisomely the marinade was just watery and flavorless. There were hints of soysauce but this was a near fail-grade. I am not sure how Donblanc is scoring a 4.5 on Google Maps. Just from the food, where I heavily weight the meat as it is a BBQ-first joint, I cannot give it above 3 stars. Admittedly, if you don't order meat and just have other dishes, I can see this place being a bit more desirable except they are a Korean BBQ restaurant. The service was friendly. The atmosphere was clean and decent. But again, we left a bit disappointed. Donblanc needs to get its meat-act together. Recommended for group of friends on a Korean-style drinking night out with some grilled meat in the center. Otherwise, not sure what else it might be good for.
Beef combo was high quality and delicious. We were pleasantly surprised they also have beef tongue available off-menu. Our waiter was friendly and attentive, we had a wonderful experience.