A friend told me a good jingisukan place had opened in Hongdae, and one thing led to another, so I ended up going several times -_-. Apparently it was a famous place in Ilsan, and business went so well that they expanded into Hongdae. It sits behind Castle Praha (to the left of Gateau Maman), and since it’s a relatively quiet corner of the bustling Hongdae area, it doesn’t look like somewhere you’d stumble across by chance.
The front entrance
A clean-looking exterior. The inside is fairly big too, but since every seat is at the counter, about 20 people fills it up.
Side dishes and the house soy sauce
They bring out a special sauce made from low-sodium soy sauce with fruit in it, and it went really well with the jingisukan lamb.
Kirin draft beer
I’d vaguely assumed a Sapporo-family beer would be the match for jingisukan, but Kirin is good too.
Charcoal
Good quality stuff.
The grill pan
A helmet-shaped grill pan. Grilling lamb on a pan like this is where the name jingisukan comes from.
Jingisukan
Lamb shoulder, they told me. Like almost every lamb place these days, it’s fresh with no gaminess.
On the grill
You grill it together with scallions and onion. The original jingisukan has you pile sauce-drizzled meat on top of bean sprouts, but this slightly tweaked style is tasty as well.
All grilled
The quality of the lamb itself feels a notch below Unbong Sanjang, but dipped in that special sauce and laid on Koshihikari rice, it was outstanding.
Lamb chops
The lamb chops looked good too so I ordered them, and while the meat was so tender it lacked chew, the fat on it made it even tastier. Apparently men generally go for the jingisukan and women for the lamb chops.
Rice
They say it’s cooked from Korean-grown Koshihikari rice, and it has a lovely gloss to it.
Lamb chops
I moved a chop onto the rice so I could pick it completely clean.
The contributed bottle
Chita Distillery special grain whisky. It’s billed as a special grain whisky, and since they were selling it at the Nagoya Airport duty-free shop I picked one up. I’ve drunk plenty of single malts over the years so I know they’re good, but I was curious what a single grain would taste like. It isn’t strongly characterful, but for its strength it goes down soft and smooth. Maybe because it’s matured in casks taken apart from barrels that had aged other whiskies, both the aroma and the taste feel refined. Given the price you might find it less satisfying than a single malt or a blended whisky of the same class, but if you want to enjoy a different kind of flavour it’s worth a try. The soft taste paired well with the food, too, which made it more satisfying still.
Oden hot pot
I was curious why oden was on the menu, so I asked: running a grilled-meat place in Korea, plenty of customers ask for something to eat as a proper meal, so they weighed up ramen and various other options and settled on oden as one of them. The oden ingredients are imported directly from Japan, and the slightly spicy, clean-tasting broth with yuzu kosho stirred into it is made in-house.
Served out
It made me realize how unremarkable the oden I used to order carelessly as a snack with cheap sake around Gangnam really was. Apparently back when they were in Ilsan there were people who came just for rice and oden, and I can understand the feeling. Do note that you can’t order the oden unless you order the jingisukan.
Cake from Peony
We moved on, and round two was at 2chef. Someone in the group had a birthday, so we had a little party.
Burrata
I asked for something to go with the wine and they brought out burrata, an Italian fresh cheese. We’d eaten ourselves silly at Darumaya, so this one thing is plenty.
Wine
A German GG wine, but maybe because we hadn’t opened it ahead of time it never showed its best side. Wine really is hard.