Geumdwaeji Sikdang — Restaurant in Seoul

The restaurant was established in year 2016 and has been awarded Michelin Bib Gourmand since year 2019. It is a very good value restaurant for the money. 0.3% domestic premium hybrid pigs (white+black+brown) are being provided, and therefore, texture is chewy and inside is juicy. Recommend: Pork Neck(눈꼿목살, 등목살) - Grilled Pork Belly (본삼겹) British Maldon sea salt also goes well with the meat. By using patented clean briquettes which make safe to remove the harmful hydrogen sulfide, the unique fire taste of briquettes can be enjoyed. As of April 2019, there are only two Santori highball machines installed in Korea. You can enjoy highball for a long time in a cool state because the ratio of highball and soda is set at 1:3 and come directly from highball machine. (recommend: Santori highball - Hibiki highball - Yamazaki highball)

Good ingredients, contemporary ambience and top notch service are leading harmony to unison. Calamansi Soju cocktail also goes well with the dishes. @seung_kyung_choi Neither reservation nor valet parking is available, but full of waiting guests every day. We can know why, once we try the first piece. The signature ones are Grilled Pork Belly or Dorsal Pork Neck, and Rib Finger is very delectable. The restaurant is recommended for friends, couples and also for family.

(Initial posting in June 2021) Meal budget per person (without drinks) Category 1 (under 60000 KRW, 50 USD)

The restaurant was established in year 2016 and has been awarded Michelin Bib Gourmand since year 2019. Special hybrid pig type (white+black+brown) is being provided, and therefore, texture is chewy and inside is juicy. British Maldon sea salt also goes well with the meat.

Good ingredients, contemporary ambience and top notch service are leading harmony to unison. Neither reservation nor valet parking is available, but full of waiting guests every day. We can know why, once we try the first piece. The signature ones are Grilled Pork Belly or Dorsal Pork Neck, and Rib Finger is...

Geumdwaeji Sikdang - Michelin Bib Gourmand Korean Bbq.

Located along a main road in Sindang-dong, Geumdwaeji Sikdang serves up fine cuts of YBD pig, a cross breed between Yorkshire, Berkshire and Duroc. The texture of the pork is firm and meaty, with a good balance of flavorful fat. Meat and veggies are cooked on a cast-iron grill over coal briquettes that help keep the temperature constant. The restaurant does not accept reservations.

We've attempted to dine here when we were in Seoul last January. We came at 6pm and there was already a huge line, probably 2 hrs of waiting. You also needed a Korean phone number to get a number for the queue. So much to my dismay, we opted for another place that time.

Finally, after some research, there were people who suggested coming in at non-peak hours between 2pm-4pm, get a queue number by inputting any random phone number and just wait for your number to be called.

I put this as part of our agenda on our first full day in Seoul this time as I was really excited to try their famous samgyeopsal.

We came at around 2ish and there were already a handful of people outside but not a lot. We were able to get in maybe after 15 minutes. However, as we were coming up to our seat at the 3rd floor, an unfortunate incident happened and I dropped my phone causing the screen to break :( haha. Needless to say, i was distracted and couldn't really appreciate the experience of this meal.

So I couldn't really judge fairly if it was good or not.

Set meal for 2 came out...

A disappointing experience. This place is quite popular and thus crowded. We got here early to try to avoid the crowds and were told the wait would be about an hour--we waited for 1.7 hours. We finally got in and were rushed up to the 3rd floor and had barely sat down when someone was already asking for our order. We told the guy we needed to look at the menu first, but less that a minute later another guy was asking for our order. We told him to wait a little longer. Unfortunately for the Geumdwaeji Sikdang, we'd just had a wonderful BBQ pork meal of the same type at a restaurant near City Hall Station two days earlier, so we had something very fresh in our minds to which we could compare. Geumdwaeji Sikdang was definitely the loser in this comparison. The pork itself was fine (portion size a little small), but the service was so so, our BBQer (clearly too busy) left after he cooked some of our meat and never came back (we had to do some of the BBQing ourselves), and there were a paltry amount of side dishes. The problem with Geumdwaeji Sikdang is it's a victim of its own success and has become a conveyor-belt like feeding station for the crowds. They are understaffed and too focused on turnover. I would never come back to...