Dong Yang Market

I just recently moved from Miami so I’m still trying to find the best Asian market out there in Lexington and so far, this has been the best market I’ve been to. It is extremely clean and doesn’t have that typical Asian market smell (which is usually smells of Chinese traditional medicine, maybe the seafood/​meat in the market, etc.) that bothers a lot of non-​Chinese/​Asian customers (and me sometimes). They carry a good range of Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Southeast Asian goods, particularly canned items, sauces and dry goods in general. Their frozen prepared items are somewhat limited, such as dumplings, buns, etc. I was disappointed that they didn’t have pork soup dumplings and I had to run elsewhere to fetch them.
Produce-​wise, they have most of what you’d need in East Asian cooking such as bok choy and napa cabbage, but I’m not sure if they have specific items for Southeast Asian cuisine such as galangal, kefir lime leaves, etc. They also have a variety of imported, hard-​to-​find ice creams, ice bars, drinks and snacks from Taiwan, Japan and Korea which is pretty cool. They also carry different cuts of meat for hot pot, Korean barbeque and other specific dishes which is a huge plus for me.
I haven’t been to the restaurant that’s in the back of the store, but that calls for a visit next time.
Overall, I’m really happy with their selection. I suppose bigger cities nearby like Louisville and Cincinnati have bigger Asian markets with even wider selections, but I can’t complain.

Great environment for date night. Intimate and quiet with good service. The food is some of the best Korean in the city. If you’re feeling spicy the pork bulgogi is worth a try!

This place is great! We recently moved from Louisville and I was very impressed by the store. It is considerably cleaner with fresher selections than any Asian grocery I frequented in Louisville. Seafood & produce sections were very nice and I loved that you could buy prepared banchan right out of the cooler.

Don’t let the restaurant being in the back of an Asian grocery store fool you. The food is great. The bul goke was fantastic.
The Asian grocery is well worth a stop as well. Great selection of Asian items.

Fantastic Bibimbap, perfectly seasoned and with a nice portion of meat. I also love their bulgogi. The banchan is really tasty and they bring out a huge variety for you to choose from; you can ask for more of your favorites if you run out.
It’s nice to stroll through the market afterwards and pick up snacks like seasoned seaweed, lychee jellies, fruit drinks, etc.

Good asian market! You can find a lot of basic needs for Asian cooking. I really enjoy finding random stationaries and home goods here as well. I can’t say no to a nice tea set or fancy chopsticks! But I will be honest– the restaurant (Seki K) in the back of the store is what makes me come here!

The market is clean, has a good selection even though it’s on the pricier side.
The restaurant at the back has a modest selection of Korean food. The service is adequate and friendly without being intrusive. I had the beef noodle soup and it was very flavorful, if not a bit too flavorful. The soup-​base tasted like it was flavored with some type of shrimp/​fish paste, which overwhelmed everything in the soup. The beef, vegetables, and noodles basically all had the same flavor. The two side dishes it came with was decent, though I wish they would let you pick what to have.

Regretful that we didn’t get to try the restaurant in the back since it was a Sunday.
Market has a decent selection, but the prices are through the roof!
Disclaimer: Make sure to check and double check the price! That is if it’s posted at all. A lot of them had missing tags while some stuff we bought rang up as a completely different price posted. When we asked the cashier– his excuse was that a lot of kids come in and move things around. Really? I understand if one or two items were misplaced in a different pile, but we’re talking about the entire section! When those kids come in next time, make sure to stop them to… hire them… cause they got some great stocking skills! Perhaps I can advice DY to properly check the stock and update the prices? Thanks.

Awesome little Asian market! We spent a couple years in Japan and miss it immensely, and DongYang had some of our favorite Japanese treats and drinks. It was clean and had lots of ingredients, fresh vegetables, and hard-​to-​find noodles. Will shop there again!

A nice market with a large selection of Asian fresh, frozen, and canned/​dry goods, with a small restaurant in the rear. (I didn’t try the restaurant.)
It’s clean, and pleasant. Staff was helpful and I won’t hesitate to ask for their help with products; there wasn’t any disapproval when the labels were in a language I didn’t understand (unlike another market in the area.)

This 4 star rating is for the grocery, not the restaurant. I needed to show Dong Yang Market some love as it has sustained my sanity throughout my time living as an Asian person in central Kentucky. DY is clean, welcoming and sells Asian grocery essentials from Korea, China, Japan and Southeast Asia. Their vegetable selection is very reasonably priced and severely underrated, and their ramen/​frozen food/​snack food section has kept me tethered. Did I say yet how clean and friendly DY market is? If you’ve been around enough Asian groceries, you know how much cleanliness is appreciated. Much love.
As for the restaurant, you won’t get mad at the food but the prices are steep if you don’t go for the lunch special. Hint: go for the lunch special.

Awesome Korean food. I had lunch here with my mom and boyfriend so we ordered 3 entrees and shared them. We had bulgogi, Kimchee with pork belly, and ginger pork. It was all SO good! We each had two side dishes of Kimchee and some kind of pickled radish. Then there were 10 other side dishes which I think came with the bulgogi because it was a regular dinner entrée. The other two were lunch options.
Everything on the menu sounded amazing. I can’t wait to go back and try the other dishes. The seafood soup is what I want to try next.
The service was pretty good, a little slow but understandable when all the food is cooked to order. I never mind waiting when I know the food will be fresh and hot. The price was also reasonable. Especially if you go at lunch, they have a lunch menu and a lunch special.
I enjoyed looking around the grocery store after we ate. There are so many interesting food items there. I didn’t buy anything this time because I didn’t have enough time to look at everything.

I went to shop for groceries, not eat in the Seki Restaurant. I was there on a Sunday when Seki is closed. I was impressed with the cleanliness, variety of products and reasonable prices. Great Mochi options, Noodle options (a lot) and Kimchi. I will definitely return for specialty grocery items and to try Seki!
And I think its important to note that the staff was friendlier than those at the Yu Yu Supermarket.

I went here for lunch on a Friday. I ordered a lunch special ($ 8) of bulgogi. This place has a nice, simple and clean feel. It’s quiet, in the back of the Korean market. There were about 2 – 3 tables ahead of me but the wait seemed a bit longer than I’d expected.
The beef, rice and two pickled sides were good. This was the first time I’ve had Korean served on a normal-​looking US diner style plate (rather than the «box»), however, and it looked a bit odd. To my surprise, there was no cabbage kimchi side. I went ahead and ordered one. Kindly they didn’t charge me.
I am not familiar with how bulgogi is supposed to look/​taste by Korean standards. The places I’ve liked best Stateside though invariably serve a soy-​sauce derived sauce on the side. It’s always good, but they didn’t do that here.
Service was friendly.
I’ll go back.

I had been wanting to check this place out for a while – I drive down Clays Mill Road and see their lunch special sign posted on the stonewall center every day. It was fantastic. We started with the dumplings – they were light tasting and filled with deliciousness. I had the pork bulgoki it was good and spicy-​I loved it. My husband had a hot pot lots of beef had an egg on top-​beautiful presentation! The smells in this place are just super, makes your mouth water for what is coming. The server was nice, service was pretty quick. Also, I didn’t know what to expect about it being in the back of a grocery store, but it’s like a real little restaurant with about 10 tables. It was about 75% full the night we were there. Several folks stopped to pick up their carry out. Very clean and nice looking.

If you can imagine Kroger Asian style! Thus grocery has Everything and I mean Everything you could need. Huge selection of produce and fresh varieties of bokchoy and Mushrooms. One entire row of all different kinds of noodles are available. Its noodle heaven there! A whole other row devoted to all kinds and styles of sauces!!! And you can also grab a great dinner in the back of the market is the MOST excellent Seki K restaurant.

This is an awesome Korean restaurant and grocery store! I’ve eaten at the restaurant twice now and each time I’ve been extremely satisfied with the food. Everything comes with appetizer dishes (or pan chans), like kimchi, marinated radish, mushrooms, black beans, etc. And their tofu soups are awesome! They can even make them not spicy, which is what I usually ask for. And the grocery store has a good variety of Asian food from 50 brands of ramen, fresh veggies, Chinese milk candies, rice, to Asian fruit soda drinks. They even have red bean mochi in the frozen aisle! The only thing is that they don’t accept American Express cards, but most other credit cards are accepted. I also wish they were open later than 8pm. But yeah I would highly recommend this Korean restaurant and grocery store for your fill of Korean food and Asian groceries!

When you go to the back of an American grocery store you will find fried chicken and meatloaf. When you go to the back of this grocery you find bib im bop, ban chan and other Korean favorites. I like fried chicken, who doesn’t, but how many fat Koreans have you ever seen. Ok, besides Psy.
This grocery was the cleanest Asian market of any kind I’ve ever been in. Floors, walls, ceilings all very clean. Someone cares a great deal about this place.
My only suggestion is that I wish they had a lunch menu. Slightly smaller portions for a little less. I usually have lunch alone and these portions are huge. I don’t mind having two pounds of leftover pork bul goke so this isn’t a hanging matter.

Supermarket was clean and choices aplenty. We tried the restaurant at the back. Excellent Korean food. Very Authentic and homestyle.
Side dishes were aplenty and very tasty; every single one. Seafood pancake was amazing, light and airy. Much better than Arirang Garden’s. Jam pong was very good and loaded with seafood. Broth was delicious. Pork bone soup had a very nice flavour. Only thing that stops me from giving 5 stars is that there was way too much potato in the Pork bone soup, with not enough meat and soup because of that.
Will definitely be back to try other dishes.

Very tasty Korean food. I got the ja jang myun and my partner got the stone pot bi bim bap without beef. We had enough food for leftovers and the prices were comparable to Koreana’s; I think my dish was $ 11. Waiter was helpful, explaining what each of the little dishes were that he brought out before our meal. I particularly liked the cabbage kimchi, the black beans, and a sweet radish dish.
Service was quick and my ja jang myun was awesome. The waiter wasn’t too sure what kinds of meat were in it, and the menu didn’t mention meat at all for this dish, so be warned. It definitely had tiny shrimp in it and I think pork and also squid, from the texture. The waiter agreed squid was likely because he said they put squid in a lot of their dishes.
The only tricky part is if you’re a vegetarian, because most dishes come with beef or pork. The bi bim bap can be made vegetarian and I think vegan, but even dishes that don’t mention meat like the ja jang myun come with meat in them. I didn’t see any chicken dishes listed. I appreciated that the meat in my dish was very finely chopped, so I got a good mixture in each bite. The noodles and the brown sauce were very tasty.
The menu is smaller than Koreana’s. The food is tastier than Arirang Garden’s. I would put this place on par quality-​wise with Koreana and Han Woo Ri. Very pleasant, clean atmosphere in the restaurant, which is in the back of the grocery. We had fun browsing the grocery after we ate and I found several neat Asian candies for reasonable prices.