Now, I'd been past this place before. Nothing on it indicates that it's a restaurant, and although Google had a restaurant symbol there, they had no name, just the address (that's now been fixed). I'd laboriously translated the sign - resulting only in "Cho Dae Gam" and a set of instructions that tell you to reach inside the gate, press the buzzer, and wait, and to please not press it again, even if it took a couple of minutes, someone would come to the door. But no indication of what sort of place it was.
So, after waiting about 30 seconds, a young man arrived at the door. We inquired about whether it was a Korean restaurant, he said yes, but they only offer lamb soup, and it's very spicy, and not for us. But we like lamb soup and we like spicy, and we'd love to try it. He seemed to consider it, but opined again that he thought we wouldn't like it, and that maybe we would be better off going to another type of restaurant. We pressed. He relented, he said. But then closed the door in our faces... only to reopen it about ten seconds later, apparently having yelled to someone in the back to buzz the gate open.
Good sized place, and it was clear, they're setup for Korean barbecue as well. But maybe not at lunch? He offered that well, yes, in addition to their lamb soup, they offer Korean barbecue. Now, the spicy lamb soup was already a given, after our push, we couldn't very well say no to it. And, besides, we like lamb soup and spicy. So, what about the pricing? Quite moderate it seems - for one person, you can get either the soup or the barbecue, 700 pesos, about $11.50. For two people, you can get either the soup or the barbecue for 800 pesos, or about $13.50. We decided we could swing both, even though it was likely to be a lot of food.
The soup arrived first, a pot of broth filled with chopped lamb and lamb "parts", and a huge pile of greens and herbs. A lid was placed atop, the fire was started, and it was left to bubble away for about 15 minutes.
We tasted the broth and it was quite mild, but he'd brought a couple of dishes of gochujang chili paste and shiso seeds, and we, I think to his shock, put both dishes full into the pot. Now it had a kick, still not overly spicy, but quite good. It was a very different style from the lamb soup that we love at Casa Bonga, this was very herbal - with a mix of cilantro, mint, shiso, and green onion flavoring pretty much every bite - I liked it a lot more than my companion did. We both were of mixed thoughts on the lamb "parts" - some of them were a bit chewy, and a few were unidentifiable, but, I'm more of an offal person than he is, and I'd happily eat this again.
The barbecue setup arrived, with a good selection of banchan, but most of it, even the couple of types of kimchis, was a bit bland. The only thing in the banchan that we really loved was the green onion salad - which bordered on being a sort of fresh-made kimchi of green onions, chili, sesame, and sugar. We ended up not just nibbling on it, but stuffing it into the lettuce wraps for the barbecue.
Two types of meat served - pork belly and some sort of beef steaks. Decent quality. And again, appreciated the selection of herbs, the same ones as in the soup, to add to the wraps. Minor negative, all the lettuce leaves were fairly small, no nice big ones for creating wraps, so we had to double them up, which turned out to be a bit messy.
And we did good - we finished most everything. But in the end, we were just a bit underwhelmed. On the other hand, if you're two people, having the price only go up by 100 pesos, only a dollar and half, makes for the cheapest Korean barbecue in the city, since most places charge you the full per person price for each additional person. Also means that if you're solo, you can come for the barbecue - most of the places refuse to serve it unless you're at least two people. read more