Mapo Sutbul Galbi

I have tried at least 10 different Korean Barbeque restaurants in Seoul from my multiple visits and since this was a business trip, I played no part in arranging the restaurants. Due to the delicate requirements of the group, we needed to find a barbeque restaurant which has both pork and beef on the menu. My Korean colleagues were telling me that most local Korean barbeque restaurants either do beef-only or pork-only

Lucky for us, there was 1 extremely famous and popular barbeque restaurant just 5 5-minute walk from our hotel (it felt like 10 minutes in the cold). You can tell the popularity by the number of cars parked right in front of the restaurant during meal times. Open for 24 hours, the restaurant is bustling with crowds all night

The restaurant is huge and spacious with an industrial chic design of cemented walls, and raw open ceilings paired with modern sleek lighting and furniture. At the entrance of the restaurant, it is not hard to notice the wall of fame with dozens of pictures of Korean celebrities pasted all over the wall like decoration. After my research, it seems that celebrities and K-pop groups like to visit this restaurant with their crew after the completion of a project as a celebratory dinner. During my visit, I did not notice any celebrities and the only one I recognised from the photo was Song Joong Ki

The side dishes served were different from most barbeque restaurants I have been to so far with unique items like; yangnyeom-gejang ( spicy raw crabs), Nokdu-muk ( mung bean jelly), Kkaennip-jangajji ( pickled perilla leaves). Some of the more common side dishes include: potato salad, pickled onions and cucumber, pickled sliced radish, cabbage kimchi and spring onion kimchi

In terms of the menu, I did not look at it thoroughly as my Korean colleague was doing all the orders but we did a big order of Korean beef ( Hanwoo) for most of my colleagues who ate beef as well as a pork belly order for me. Even though I did not eat the beef, the marbling looked fantastic and my colleagues were making satisfied ‘hmms’ throughout the meal so I can conclude the beef must have tasted wonderful. The plus point was the servers cooked all our meats for us. The pork belly was thick cut but I personally prefer pork collar which they do not have on the menu. For pork, they only had pork belly and marinated pork whereas they had a much wider menu for beef items

We also ordered a small serving of kimchi soup which was spicy and savoury with a tinge of sourness from the sour kimchi

Overall, the meal at Mapo Sutbul Galbi was satisfactory since we did not encounter any of the bad experiences I read about from multiple reviews. The staff was mostly friendly because we had a local Korean doing all the orders and instructions. In terms of meat quality, the Hanwoo is definitely top-notch without saying but for the pork, it was a good cut but not exclusive as I had better ones elsewhere. I have read that they are very unfriendly to lone foreigners, so I would suggest visiting Maple Tree House here. I visited at least 7 years ago and the meal there has been unforgettable. It is a premium restaurant so do expect the prices to range higher but service was top notch and there were more meat selections

Address: 232 Dosan-daero, Nonhyeon-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea

Operating hours: 24 hours but Google says 11 am to 6 am