WangBiJip (Jongno branch) — Restaurant in Seoul

Found the place from couple of foodie blog reviews (searched for 'best korean bbq seoul'). Picked it up since it had high rating in Google plus it was close by (we were staying in Myeongdong). VERY much recommended. The service was nice, the head waiter spoke good english (naturally this is person dependent), the meat was very good (my wife's rather picky, she had no problems at all - me and our son loved every bit :). And to top it, even our daughter who is a vegetarian (the head waiter's reaction to this was.. a bit surprised, a bit amused and very courteous :-D) found the tofu soup (together with the sides) to be sufficiently filling and delicious - she got a rice bowl to go with the soup, plus the head waiter discreetly moved the mushrooms to her corner as he was grilling the stuff for us. The atmosphere and decor was cosy (NOTE: do not expect a fine dining place with waiters fussing around you, this is a no-frills downtown grill!) and all in all the experience was very warm and relaxing - just the kind you want after a day of walking your feet off in shops/sightseeing. The only shortcoming, if you can call it as such, was that the place closed down at 10 pm (22:00), not at 22:30 as listed by Google. This was Sunday though so that might be the cause. Note also that the place can be a bit tricky to find - it is on 2nd floor, the sign on the street is NOT in English, but the menu in the stairway (at ground level) did spell out the name in...

DON"T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY HERE! When we first arrived it did not seem like we were even welcome in the business. I do not understand why because there was no other customers in the business. Maybe we should have taken this as a hint and left but we wanted to have some authentic Korean BBQ and this is what popped up when we goggled it for the area that we were in. We ordered to dishes, one was pork belly (which was 1 piece of meat about 6 inches long by 2 inches wide and maybe 1/2 inch thick) which was 16,000 won; the other dish was beef (it turned out to be maybe 8 pieces of beef brisket all of which were about 1.5 inches by 1 inch and maybe 1/8 inch thick) and this ran us 28,000 won. Rice is not included nor is beverages so we just ordered 2 servings of rice with water and the total bill ran us almost 50,000 won which is between $45 and $50 US. I know that in the US, you can get an all you can eat Korean BBQ meal for 2 for less than this and the food there was not that good. So if you are in this area, don't, (I mean it!) DON"T!!! Waste your time or your money here. It can be better spent tasting the street food. This place is a...

There are many BBQ restaurants in Seoul to enjoy and all very similar, however this spot had an easy menu to read and helpful staff - the three that served us all spoke English. The service here was top notch. Our meat was cooked perfectly, portioned out to each person at the table and the dude timed the next BBQ meat portions well, giving us time to rest.

My friend dropped some food on her clothes and before she knew it, a server provided her with napkins. Really enjoyed the pumpkin banchan and green onion kimchi with raw egg. Ordered a side of steamed eggs and it was fluffy and subtle without being oversalted. It could have been bigger though. Wasn't a fan of the bibimmyun. The noodles were overcooked.

All to say- great experience and clean. Bright and airy with the windows all around and because of the cool fans that come down to the meat, our hair and clothes did not smell...