Seoul Food – BEST Korean BBQ

We both love Korean BBQ but after living in Seoul for several years the novelty of Korean BBQ has gone away and BBQ restaurants seem more or less the same now. That changed when we went to Hwapo Shikdong (화포식당).

As with every Korean meal, you have an assortment of side dishes that you can refill at any time during your meal. I usually don’t eat a lot of the side dishes because I don’t want to be full before I eat the rest of my meal but these all tasted so refreshing that I couldn’t stop eating them. Everything is made inhouse and the quality is definitely superior to other BBQ restaurants.

This is the best beef I have ever eaten. The fat to meat ratios was perfection and it was fresh. They do not freeze their meat, which isn’t uncommon for some BBQ restaurants, so you could taste the freshness. Mana was our grill master and she cooked each piece until they were about medium-rare. This meat was so good that we didn’t want to ruin the taste with other sauces so we dipped it in the salt which brought out the flavor even more.

I am not a fan of pork or pork belly so I am particular about pork whenever I eat it, but this was amazing. We dipped it in the salt before we tried it with the sauce to see how it tasted and it was delicious. Again, the meat was fresh and it wasn’t overly fatty.  We grilled it until it was slightly dark brown because it has the best texture. This was the pork belly of our dreams.

While you can find decent BBQ in any Seoul neighborhood you can’t beat the quality of Hwapo Sikdong . It’s BBQ that can’t be beat.