This post was written in 2008. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
An acquaintance offered to treat us, so we dropped by a galbi place near Maebong Station that’s supposedly doing really well. I heard it’s pretty famous in this neighborhood..
The storefront
It’s a cheap, generous pork galbi joint, but the cars parked out front are something else. I guess that’s the neighborhood for you.. We met early, so we didn’t have to queue, but apparently on weekends that big building fills right up and you have to wait in line.
This is the pork galbi you get.
I think it was 15,000 won per person.. (note to self: photograph the menu next time). For the price, it tastes pretty good. It’s not quite the number one of the pork galbi world, but maybe because the meat is thick, it has a nice chew and the marinade has soaked in well. I could see why it’s popular.
The house specialty: seonji haejangguk (ox blood soup)
Honestly, this moved me more than the galbi. No gamey smell, clean and refreshing, really delicious. Plenty of stuff in it, too. Free refills on haejangguk this good!! It made me want to come back again and again.
Vegetables
Pork galbi is great dipped in this ^_^
The other basic side dishes
Standard barbecue-joint side dishes, nothing special at all.
Dongchimi (radish water kimchi)
Nothing special here either. Maybe it would have been better served a bit colder.
Chamisul
To my taste, Chum Churum is better. Thinking back to the old days, times sure have changed.
The meat grilled up nicely.
Around here we added rice and more meat and got down to serious eating. What’s more, unlike other places, they swap out the grill plate right away.
The extra meat
We must have eaten about three servings. Maybe we overdid it a little, but we kept eating anyway.
The extra seonji haejangguk
This is what we got as a free refill. Whoa.. Thank you, ma’am~ If there were a place like this near my home or office, I might honestly come every week.
The kimchi is decent too.
But maybe because everything else was so good, I didn’t reach for it much.
We ordered naengmyeon at the end to cleanse the palate, but..
This one wasn’t great. Both the noodles and the broth fall well short. I’d have been better off finishing with just the seonji soup.
Sikhye for dessert..
Perfect apart from the naengmyeon. Even setting aside the huge advantage of being cheap, it’s worth a visit at least once. Just be aware that it’s so popular you need to time it right if you want to eat without queuing.