Apologies to non-foodies and to strict vegetarians: This post is all about Korean BBQ. There’s a lot of meat and a lot of food involved. If this topic is not your cup of tea — or your cut of meat — please come back for the next post. We’ll miss you!
We had many motivations for our trip to Seoul. Half of Mike’s heritage comes from Korea, and he’s never visited before. The city is famous for vitality, modernity, and history. And for FOOD! Korean BBQ — or gogi-gui, which means “fire roast” — is a very bright star among the constellation of Korean cuisine.
You may recall that we have a weakness for barbecue, last demonstrated in central Texas.
There are two essential parts to Korean BBQ meals: the meat, and the sides, or banchan. Here’s a bit of background on both. Meat first:
Korean barbeque is typically slices of meat or marinated meats (chicken, pork, beef) that are cooked on a charcoal grill and then wrapped with rice and lettuce to be eaten. Bulgogi (in Korean, this literally means fire meat, but we are familiar with it as marinated beef) is one of the most popular meats that many individuals associate with Korean barbeque.
Bulgogi and its origins date back to the Goguryeo era (37 B.C. to 668 A.D.) and bulgogi was in the form of a skewered meat called maekjeok. Maek referred to the group that lived in the Goguryeo era, while Jeok meant skewer. [Over the centuries, maekjeok evolved into seoryamyeok (roasted and soaked in water), and then into neobiani (marinated and roasted), and finally] into bulgogi, which has been the signature dish that could be found at almost every Korean restaurant.
Korea [has] predominantly [been] an agriculture-based industry – meat, especially beef, was not as common to consume on a daily basis, as slaughtering a cow for meat made no economic sense when they were essential for plowing in farms. However, in major cities, there was an increase in raising cows for the purpose of beef in the 1920s as restaurants specializing in bulgogi appeared. Thus, beef became commercialized and widespread as demand for bulgogi increased…. However, Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945 led to beef shortages and the dish’s popularity waned due to high prices as a result.
In the 1950s, bulgogi became popular once again with the introduction of slicing machines that came to Korea from the U.S military during the Korean War. These slicing machines allowed meat used to prepare bulgogi to be sliced more thinly. This contributed to the rebound of bulgogi’s popularity as serving the beef in extremely thin slices meant it cooked faster for diners. Along with the building of sugar factories in the early 1950s, the marinade used for the meat became sweeter due to the accessibility and convenience of sugar as it replaced onion and pear juice as sweeteners. Thus, the bulgogi that we know of today that is so easily accessible to many has a very rich and long history.
(source)
The banchan, or side dishes, play a crucial role in the balanced pleasure of a Korean BBQ meal.
Banchan is a general term for a set of side dishes, and there are several types of banchan, one of which most people know to be kimchi, specifically kimchi cabbage. The variety of banchan can be grouped by preparation style – fermented and pickled, lightly seasoned boiled, braised, sauteed or stir-fried, or steamed.
Banchan has a long history in Korean culture, especially since Korea was originally an agricultural-focused country and fermentation is a method of preservation that has been used for thousands of centuries by many civilizations….
It is believed that Buddhist influence played a big role in banchan becoming a core part of Korean cuisine. During the mid-three Kingdom period of Korea (57 BCE – 668 CE), Buddhism spread to Korea and one of the kingdoms that ruled Korea even adopted Buddhism as the state religion. Buddhist influence led to the ban on consumption of meat, which gave rise to vegetable-based dishes.
The end of the ban became about with the Mongol invasions of Korea (1231-1259)…. Korea becoming a vassal state [of the Mongol empire] meant an end to the ban of meat dishes; however, six centuries of vegetarian cuisines meant banchan had already become a permanent part of Korean cuisine.
(source)
OK, class over. Let’s get to table and roll up our sleeves.
The style of a Korean BBQ meal is pretty consistent. You sit at a table with a brazier in the middle of the table. The brazier is heated usually by gas, but sometimes by real charcoal. A staff member grills the meats you’ve chosen at the table. They know what they’re doing much more than we ever could. (Our experience from Hawaii and California has been that we’re left on our own at the table; we grill as best we can. So this was a pleasant surprise to have an expert taking care of the grilling.) Small bowls of banchan spread on the table around the brazier. There’s usually some cabbage kimchee. While kimchee can have a reputation of being very chili-hot, almost all that we ate during our trip were full of flavor and only moderately spicy. Other typical banchan are pickled onions or radishes, greens, and cucumber salad.
Many restaurants focus on specific sources and cuts of meat, such as beef from a unique location and breed variety, or similarly for pork and chicken. When we saw the serious attention to these specifics, we couldn’t help thinking of the French concept of terroir; it’s the recognition that the fine details of land, climate, sun exposure, cultivation techniques, and more, hugely affect the qualities of what is produced. This is all about care and focus.
We enjoyed quite a few Korean BBQ style meals. In many cases, we stopped spontaneously in restaurants whose menu boards looked good, and whose customers looked happy.
But we also did our research and made reservations at three noted Korean BBQ restaurants. Here’s a bit of our experiences:
From Michelin:
Born and Bred is the brainchild of Jeong Sang-won, whose obsession with top-quality Korean beef started young, thanks to his beef purveyor father. Jeong created a one-of-a-kind space that offers three different dining concepts. The casual eatery on the second floor has been inspired by the butcher restaurants that populate the vicinity of the Majang Meat Market, but it is decidedly more modern and refined. The butcher lounge occupies the first floor while the third floor offers a multi-course beef experience. However, for a taste of what the restaurant is truly all about, head down to the basement for the chef’s specialty beef course.
We selected their so-called Casual Dining Course. It struck us as a mixture of traditional Korean BBQ with Western multi-course organization, and some fusion humor — that’s probably what makes this menu Casual.
Our table griller was part chef and part performer. He presented us with these six cuts of beef and explained a bit about each. The restaurant didn’t marinate the meat as you’d expect from classic bulgogi; perhaps because the cuts were so good. He carefully grilled each to what he proposed were the optimal levels of doneness. He was correct.
For the third course, we selected the Born & Bred Signature Burger. It was indeed a burger, and one of the best burgers we’ve had. However, the cheese, sauce and rather lovely bun overshadowed the meat itself. This course felt cute, rather than on point.
We learned at this restaurant that a typical finish for a Korean meal is soup, and perhaps rice. By the time we got to the phở, we were stuffed.
From Michelin:
Byeokje Galbi is a local institution that has been serving legendary barbecued beef short ribs since 1986. The restaurant’s attention to quality begins from the breeding of the cows at a local farm in Pocheon. Only the top 1% (BMS No9) are purchased, whole, at a daily auction, after which they are handled by an artisan butcher. The signature dishes are the beautifully marbled short ribs and ribeye grilled over charcoal. From a simple meal of cold buckwheat noodles and soup to an elaborate barbecue feast, Byeokje Galbi caters to all occasions.
We walked about 30 minutes from our afternoon activity to this restaurant. This is where we encountered what we called the Rodeo Drive of Seoul: one bespoke luxury-brand store after another. This fact should have warned us of what was to come.
The restaurant sits on a more modest street behind “Rodeo Drive.” An attractive understated entrance.
Upon arriving, the host told us that there are only private rooms at this restaurant — which is a detail we hadn’t noticed in our research. OK, why not? Although it’s more fun to see other diners and activity in a restaurant.
Our private dining room was very handsome. The staff were gracious without being at all stuffy.
We opened the menu and discovered that a private room means that the prices are very high. Very very high. We took some deep breaths and rationalized: We’re not exactly frequent visitors to Seoul; we love BBQ; let’s celebrate all our birthdays at once. With some effort, we banished thoughts of cost — at least for the evening!
For the money, we did get a really lovely experience. All the dishes and courses were beautiful and very tasty.
After the initial courses, our main server introduced us to the Beef Master (that sounds not quite right!). He proceeded to carve an array of choice morsels. He demonstrated his prodigious knife skills; he repeatedly sliced on both sides of each piece of meat in order to maximize the amount of surface that can carbonize during the gilling — all while keeping the pieces intact.
The grilled meat was delicious; the banchan fabulous too. We particularly liked the garlicky greens (despite their looking like overcooked kale). Each time we finished the greens, a new plate appeared right away.
When we enjoy grilled meat, we definitely want to pair it with some red wine. Wine in the European sense is not really part of Korean dining. But, this is an upscale restaurant with international clientele, so we looked through the wine list. Wines in restaurants anywhere in the world have a tendency to be marked up considerably. But these were exponentially marked up. We have great wines at home, so, here, we just wanted a basic red wine. We chose the least expensive option, which, as we recall was a European wine. Our host apologized, saying that they didn’t have any more of that wine, or even the next wine on the menu. That moved us into stupid-price territory. We hesitated. Our host said, We do have a nice Bulgarian wine that’s not on the menu, and at the price point you are looking for. Why not, we thought; we didn’t come to Seoul for the wine. Well, let’s just say, it was red wine.
While a few servers came and went in our private room (still can’t get over that!), our principal server was a bubbly young woman. At one point she said something to the effect that we were the most pleasant customers that she’s had in quite a while. At first we thought she was just giving us a nice standard line. But as we chatted, we realized that high-end expensive private-room dining attracts all sorts of self-important people. (Hopefully, we are not they!) It seems that often enough these types act out their arrogance and demean the folks serving them. Our server’s feedback was that we were just relaxed, unassuming, and in good humor. Which she appreciated.
Sooksoodoga
From Michelin:
Chef’s years-long study and mission to “create the best aged beef using the finest Korean meat” according to its own manual, the restaurant dry-ages the meat for 720 hours under varying conditions of temperature, humidity and oxygen for optimal fermentation in order to maximize its umami taste. This aged meat is then grilled on the table using the chef’s trademark method, which is known to best bring out the beef’s distinct flavor. Depending on the cuts, there are three different course meals available. The restaurant’s prices, set affordably to help popularize the appeal of aged beef, add greatly to its attraction.
We had dinner at Sooksoodoga on our last night in Seoul. By this time, we were completely comfortable with the Seoul subway. We followed Google’s directions to a low-key neighborhood.
We found a very small store-front restaurant — only about six tables. At the back, the kitchen opened onto the dining room. We felt immediately like we were in the kind of restaurant that is common in France: Maybe only two or three people working, chef, server, helper, and that’s all; youngish folks who care very much about their personal restaurant.
By now, we’d experimented quite a bit with Seoul Korean BBQ, so what was on the menu as well as the set-up were familiar. We followed the hosts advice. We enjoyed his grilling technique.
Everything from a spiced tartare through the meats and banchan, to the hearty soup at the end was delicious.
Even the wine was reasonably priced and rather good. Mostly, the vibe, let’s say, was comfortable, welcoming and all about quality. Our favorite Korean BBQ experience of our visit.
Until next time…
