Just when it seemed like I was getting a good grip on my massive backlog of restaurant reports, this week ran away from me a little bit. I posted a report from Bombay on Tuesday but then completely failed to put up a Twin Cities report on Wednesday and a Seoul report on Friday—to say nothing of the report from Newark that I failed to put up last Sunday. But hey, it’s not a job and, let’s be frank, there are very few people out there reading these reports on anything approaching a regular basis. If you are one of these people, then I apologize for the delay. Somehow I think we all survive. Anyway, here is this week’s Seoul report.
On our visit to Seoul in early 2024 we were a little surprised to see how much more prevalent pork is compared to beef in the city’s barbecue scene. That surprise is because our experience/expectations of Korean barbecue are conditioned by Los Angeles where beef is king. Of course, beef is much more expensive in South Korea and it makes sense that restaurants catering to the young and to the middle-class should be centered on pork. Such is the case, for example, at the majority of bbq places in the hipster-gentrified neighbourhood of Ikseondong, where hanoks have been converted into Insta-famous bakeries, cafes, stores and restaurants.
Ikseondong is only about a 10 minute walk from where we were putting up and so when the boys asked for bbq one weekend evening, we decided to stroll on over and find a place to eat. This was not quite as easy in practice as it had seemed in theory. While there are many, many restaurants in the area, and many of them bbq specialists, finding one with space for us was not easy. We finally ended up at Ikseon Ododok, a hip place with charcoal grills at the indoor tables and electric grills on small tables in the courtyard. We could only get one of those small courtyard tables but decided to take one rather than keep wandering around.
The menu is only a little larger than the tables and not everything on it was available. Indeed, their namesake Ododok Grilled Pork was already out. We selected a large pork set for 3-4 people (neck, belly, skirt, the server told us) and some side dishes. Perched on tiny stools around the tiny table we were unsure about how the food we’d ordered would all fit, and they had to keep bringing out small stools to hold it all. It was not the most comfortable dining experience. Unlike at a number of places in Seoul, here you grill the meat yourself. Managing it all, while eating and trying not to knock anything off the table took some doing.
The meal itself, I’m sorry to say, was just about okay. The pork was fine but the small electric grill didn’t really do it justice. The steamed egg and kimchi-jigae we’d ordered on the side were decent as were the two naengmyeons we got to end the meal (Korean bbq without a bowl of chilled mul naengmyeon at the end just seems wrong). One of these was regular mul naengmyeon, the other a spicy version with quite a bit of hot red pepper paste suspended in it. It was interesting to try the hot/spicy iteration but I preferred the original.
For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.
Service was friendly but not very present—they were slammed. Price? 117,000 won for all of the above, which is $82 at the current exchange rate. Not bad but we ate better pork bbq a week or two later.
Alright, I will try to get the missed Twin Cities report out tomorrow. That will cover dinner at Alma at the end of June. After that I’ll have only one more Twin Cities report to go before I become more or less current. Let’s see how it goes.