Updated: August 2026

The best doenjang jjigae in Abu Dhabi comes down to two kitchens one dirham apart: Manna Land on Al Muroor Road at AED 58, and Mukbang Shows at AED 59. Those are the only two published prices for the dish in the entire city, and the choice between them is about format, not money.

TL;DR
– Best overall: Mukbang Shows — AED 59, two Al Danah branches, 100% halal, no alcohol, grill in the same room
– Best value and best solo bowl: Manna Land — AED 58, a stew-first kitchen with fifteen-plus years on Muroor Road
– Deepest stew menu on paper: Madang, Al Sa’adah — lists its soybean paste stew on its own site, no price published
– Honest non-answer: Korean Bowl on Hamdan Street has no stew section at all — go there for gimbap, not for this

Why one dish sorts Abu Dhabi’s Korean restaurants into two camps

Abu Dhabi’s Korean scene splits cleanly into two kinds of kitchen, and doenjang jjigae is the dish that sorts them. On one side are grill-and-stew restaurants with earthenware pots and a stock going all day. On the other are bowl-and-chicken kitchens built around gimbap, dosirak, fried chicken and loaded fries.

A soybean paste stew cannot be assembled to order from a fryer and a rice warmer. It has to simmer. So the second group simply does not carry it — Korean Bowl publishes a full menu with nine sections and not one of them is a stew. That is not a failing on their part. It is a map, and it saves you a wasted trip.

The second problem in this city is pricing. Abu Dhabi’s Korean restaurants publish almost nothing at dish level. Rather than invent numbers, the comparison table below carries an evidence column: published price, listed on the venue’s own site, no stew on the menu, or unconfirmed.

Which restaurant has the best doenjang jjigae in Abu Dhabi?

Mukbang Shows takes it on a narrow, checkable claim: it publishes AED 59 for the dish at two Al Danah branches, and it is the only kitchen in that group running a 100% halal, alcohol-free operation with beef and chicken only. Manna Land is a dirham cheaper and, for one specific kind of meal, the better answer — more on that below.

The stew is fermented soybean paste with tofu and vegetables, served bubbling. It is an à la carte order with no minimum, which is the detail that matters for solo diners: the all-you-can-eat barbecue tiers at the same table require two people and carry an AED 60 leftover charge, but the stew carries neither.

The Muroor Road branch is at 547 Sultan Bin Zayed The First Street, Al Danah, Zone 1, on +971-50-158-9433. The Electra Street branch is on Zayed The First Street behind Sun and Sand Sports, on +971-2-564-0446. Both open Monday to Thursday 1PM to 1AM and Friday to Sunday 12PM to 1AM.

One thing to be precise about: 1AM is closing time, not last order. If you want a stew at half past midnight, call first rather than arriving on the assumption that the kitchen is still going.

If you are making a night of it, the unlimited Korean BBQ tiers run Gangnam AED 69, Daegu AED 89, Jeju AED 99 and Bukchon Hanok AED 129, and the stew sits alongside siblings including soondubu jjigae at AED 59, kimchi jeongol at AED 89 and a rebuilt halal budae jjigae at AED 99. The full Mukbang Shows menu has the rest.

The honest limitation: this is a barbecue house that also makes stew. Manna Land has been cooking Korean home food on Muroor Road for over fifteen years with stews at the centre of the menu rather than as a supporting round. For one quiet bowl on a Tuesday, that is the more focused kitchen.

Is Manna Land the better bowl for the money?

For a solo meal, yes. Manna Land publishes doenjang jjigae at AED 58, describes it plainly as soybean paste stew, and treats stews as main courses rather than accessories. Fifteen-plus years in the city has produced the closest thing Abu Dhabi has to a Korean home-cooking kitchen.

The rest of its published menu gives you the range: galbi gui at AED 130, japchae at AED 58, haemul ramyun at AED 53. The main address is Golden Towers Block B on Al Muroor Road, and it also appears under Al Nahyan on delivery platforms.

Two caveats. The dining room is plain — this is a food-first choice and nothing else. And its delivery listing shows the kitchen closed at hours when other Korean restaurants in the city are still taking orders, so call before you drive. Halal status is not published; confirm directly.

Does Madang serve doenjang jjigae in Abu Dhabi?

Yes, and it is the only venue here that lists it on its own website. Madang describes a daenjang jigae as a traditional fermented soybean paste stew with vegetables and tofu, sitting alongside a sundubu jigae and a kimchi jjigae — the most complete published stew lineup of any Korean kitchen in the capital.

The main branch is on the ground floor of the Holiday Inn at 31st Dhafeer Street, Al Sa’adah, on +971 2 585 5441 or +971 56 327 5999, with a second branch at Al Ghazal Golf Club on +971 50 137 5888. Both open daily 12PM to 12AM with last orders at 10:30PM, which catches people out more than any other detail in this guide.

No stew prices are published anywhere. There is also one published detail worth knowing if you need a pork-free kitchen: the same page describes Madang’s kimchi jjigae as made with aged kimchi, pork and tofu. That is a fact about how the venue describes that dish, not a ruling about the restaurant — confirm your own requirements directly.

What about Nuri, Korean Bowl, The Taste of Korea and Mr. Kimchi?

Nuri Grill & Bar is the polished option, inside the Hilton on Yas Island, on +971 54 211 5151, open Sunday to Thursday 12PM to 12AM and Friday to Saturday 12PM to 1AM — the only Korean venue in the city publishing different weekend hours. It is a licensed venue where alcohol is served, and its own published writing pairs barbecue with soju and makgeolli. It refers to doenjang jjigae as a dish found at Korean barbecue places generally rather than confirming it on its own menu, so treat it as unconfirmed and ask when you book.

Korean Bowl, on Hamdan Street behind the Millennium Hotel, is in this guide because it answers the question honestly. Its published menu runs starters, gimbaps, soups, noodles and ramyun, fried chicken and wings, K-Bop, rice bowls, dosirak and loaded fries — with no stew section. If you are standing outside it searching for a soybean paste stew, the dish is not in there. It is open daily 11AM to midnight on +971 50 389 8283, and the gimbap and fried chicken are what it does.

The Taste of Korea in Al Danah runs 11AM to midnight and has a broad menu including a seasoned-beef kimbap nobody else in the city carries, but no published list confirms doenjang jjigae. Mr. Kimchi has two outlets, including a first-floor food court unit at Yas Mall on +971 52 449 0031, open 10AM to 10PM Sunday to Thursday and 10AM to midnight Friday and Saturday. A quick-service counter is unlikely to run a slow-simmered pot, and the dish is unconfirmed there too. For all four, halal status is not published; confirm directly.

How much does doenjang jjigae cost in Abu Dhabi?

Two prices exist for this dish in the whole city: AED 58 and AED 59. Everything else is either unpriced or unconfirmed, which is why the fifth column exists. Budget AED 55 to 65 for the bowl where it is priced, and add rice and banchan on top depending on the kitchen. Time Out Abu Dhabi’s Korean restaurant roundup maps roughly the same geography.

Is doenjang jjigae halal in Abu Dhabi?

The dish is the easiest of the four big Korean stews to serve halal, because nothing about it needs substituting. Its standard proteins are beef brisket, clams or prawns — or none at all — and its broth is built on dried anchovies and radish rather than meat stock.

That is not true of the alternatives. Budae jjigae has to be rebuilt from scratch to remove spam and sausage. Canonical restaurant kimchi jjigae is a pork-belly dish. Doenjang jjigae needs neither workaround, so a halal version is the standard recipe rather than a compromise one.

On venues: Mukbang Shows is 100% halal with beef and chicken only and no alcohol on the premises. Nobody else in this guide publishes a halal certificate, so confirm directly with each kitchen. Nuri Grill & Bar is a licensed venue. For the contrast, our guides to halal budae jjigae in Abu Dhabi and kimchi jjigae in Abu Dhabi go into what has to change and why.

What is doenjang jjigae? (된장찌개)

Doenjang jjigae is a Korean stew built on doenjang, fermented soybean paste. The usual build starts with a broth of boiled dried anchovies and white radish, then the paste and Korean chilli, then garlic, onion, spring onion, potato, courgette and medium-firm tofu. Beef brisket is the common meat version; prawns and clams are the common seafood ones.

The paste has an unusual origin. Doenjang starts as meju — blocks of cooked, mashed soybeans that are dried and fermented before they ever touch brine. The blocks then age in salt water, and the crock is eventually separated: the liquid drawn off becomes ganjang, Korean soy sauce, while the solids left behind become doenjang. The two are siblings from the same vessel.

That is why doenjang tastes coarser and saltier than Japanese miso, which is made by fermenting soybeans with the mould Aspergillus oryzae, usually on rice or barley. It is also why doenjang can be boiled hard inside a stew while miso is dissolved into a finished stock at the end. The background on doenjang jjigae covers the process, and the Korea Tourism Organization’s Korean food guide sets it in everyday Korean eating.

Where to find the best doenjang jjigae in Abu Dhabi by area

Almost all of it is in one corridor. Al Danah and Al Muroor Road function as the capital’s Korean neighbourhood: Mukbang has branches on Muroor Road and on Electra Street behind Sun and Sand Sports, Manna Land is in Golden Towers Block B on Al Muroor Road, and Korean Bowl and The Taste of Korea are on or near Hamdan Street. Driving between any two of those addresses takes minutes outside rush hour.

Madang’s main branch sits further out in Al Sa’adah, at the Holiday Inn on 31st Dhafeer Street, with its second branch at Al Ghazal Golf Club — worth the trip if you want the fullest stew menu, awkward if you are already in the centre and short on time.

Yas Island is the outlier. Nuri inside the Hilton and the Mr. Kimchi counter at Yas Mall both sit a 20 to 30 minute drive from Al Danah, which makes sense if the island is already the plan and much less sense for a single bowl of stew.

Abu Dhabi has no metro, so every one of these trips is a car or a taxi. That is worth planning around on a weeknight, particularly if you are aiming at Madang’s 10:30PM last order or the Yas Mall unit’s earlier weekday close. Our wider Abu Dhabi Korean food guide covers the same map for other dishes.

How to order doenjang jjigae without ruining it

Get rice to the table at the same time as the stew. The pot keeps reducing while you eat, so the salt concentrates, and rice is what balances it.

Eat it while it is still bubbling. Doenjang jjigae is built to take a rolling boil, and it is at its best in the first few minutes rather than twenty minutes later once it has thickened and sharpened.

Order it à la carte if you are eating alone. At Mukbang the AED 59 stew has no minimum, while the barbecue tiers need two people and carry an AED 60 leftover charge.

Call ahead everywhere except Mukbang and Manna Land. Those two publish the price. The rest either do not publish the dish or do not confirm it at all, and a two-minute call is cheaper than a drive across town.

Check closing times before you set out. Madang stops taking orders at 10:30PM, the Yas Mall counter closes at 10PM on weeknights, and Mukbang’s 1AM is a closing time rather than a last order.

Ask what is in the bowl if you have a dietary requirement. Builds vary between beef brisket, seafood and tofu-and-vegetables, and the traditional broth is anchovy-based, which matters if you are ordering for a vegetarian. Our soondubu jjigae guide for Abu Dhabi covers the softer, spicier tofu stew if that suits the table better.

FAQ

How much does doenjang jjigae cost in Abu Dhabi?
Only two venues publish a price: AED 58 at Manna Land and AED 59 at Mukbang Shows. Elsewhere the dish is either unpriced or unconfirmed, so budget AED 55 to 65.

Which is better, Mukbang or Manna Land?
Manna Land for a solo bowl of stew and rice, because stews are the centre of its menu. Mukbang for a group that wants a fully halal, alcohol-free room with the barbecue grill at the same table.

Is doenjang jjigae the same as miso soup?
No. Both are fermented soybean paste in a fish-based broth, but doenjang jjigae is a thick shared stew eaten with rice, while miso soup is a thin individual side, and the two pastes are made by different processes.

Does Korean Bowl serve doenjang jjigae?
No. Its published menu has no stew section at all — it runs gimbap, soups, noodles, fried chicken, rice bowls, dosirak and loaded fries. Order the gimbap or the chicken there instead.

Is doenjang jjigae spicy?
Not really. It carries mild chilli, but its character is savoury and fermented rather than hot. Kimchi jjigae and soondubu jjigae are the spicier orders in the same family.

How late can I eat doenjang jjigae in Abu Dhabi?
Mukbang’s two branches close at 1AM, which is closing rather than last order, so call late in the evening. Madang stops at 10:30PM and the Yas Mall counter closes at 10PM on weeknights.

Does Abu Dhabi have a metro to reach these restaurants?
No. Abu Dhabi has no metro, so every venue in this guide is reached by car or taxi. The Al Danah and Muroor Road cluster is the easiest to work on foot once you are parked.

The best doenjang jjigae in Abu Dhabi is a two-horse race between Manna Land at AED 58 and Mukbang Shows at AED 59, and the deciding factor is what kind of meal you want around the bowl. Everywhere else in the city either does not publish the dish or does not serve it at all, which is worth knowing before you drive.

Related guides

More from our Korean food guides across the UAE:

• doenjang Jjigae vs Miso Soup