Hongdae restaurant with free parking and fruit highballs: Hawaii Clam

Whenever I go to Hongdae, dinner always seems to require an opening-time run, lol. Whatever Hongdae hotspot it is, the place fills up so fast you wonder if it's really a weekday. With that many people crowding Hongdae, if a place is small and has no sense of openness, all those crowds can feel suffocating...

But the place I'm introducing today keeps everything wide open, and above all, it's got a strong seaside vibe — the restaurant is genuinely huge, a grilled clam place. Honestly, if I'd gotten drunk enough, I might have thought I was in Taean, or Daecheon, or Ganghwado, lol. Here's my Hongdae restaurant review!

Where is Hawaii Clam Hongdae Branch, and what are its hours?

📍Location: B1, Taekyung Building, 19-8 Wausan-ro 21-gil, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea 📍Hours: 16:00 - 02:00 (daily) 📍Restroom: Inside, separated by gender 📍Parking: Underground parking right next to the restaurant!

Free parking in Hongdae? The underground lot next door

Hawaii Clam Hongdae Branch has an underground parking lot right next to the restaurant! No barrier gate, completely free to use. At first glance there seemed to be plenty of spots (this was during opening hours), but by the time we finished eating, the restaurant was packed and there were noticeably more cars in the lot too, so there might not always be space.

There's a bit of a slope going down, so be careful~

The tank at the entrance and the outdoor tent seats

Ahh... it turns out Hawaii Clam Hongdae Branch is the place known for that outdoor tank, where if you order grilled shrimp, they scoop the shrimp live right there and pour them straight into your pot!

You could see all kinds of seafood in the tank, so I checked out who my dinner companions would be before heading inside haha.

Right next to it, since the weather's been nice lately, there was plenty of outdoor tent seating too, giving off that street-food-stall vibe~ I saw quite a few foreign visitors coming to Hongdae specifically to enjoy grilled clams here!

How big is the inside of Hawaii Clam Hongdae Branch?

It was a bit warm out, so I headed indoors~ The inside of Hawaii Clam Hongdae Branch is genuinely huge, able to seat over 80 people!

There are seats all the way in the back too haha. There's that much room and space, but around 5-6pm it fills up fast with a lot of customers, so I'd recommend coming early : )

And since the place handles seafood, I honestly expected a fishy smell inside, but they must manage it really well because there wasn't a hint of it~! That part I really loved haha.

Wine with grilled clams, plus the unlimited ramen corner

Also, Hawaii Clam has soju and beer of course, but surprisingly, it's a grilled clam place where you can pair it with wine too~ If your usual drinks are wine and spirits but you love grilled clams, this place is the best~~

Wow! And in one corner of the restaurant there was a corner where you could grab unlimited ramen!!!!!! Personally I highly recommend the Yeul Ramen. Honestly I thought I'd be too full for ramen, but once I actually ate it... it was seriously delicious.

Table setting and the side dishes

Once you sit down, every table has its own set of chopsticks, sauces, and glasses ready to go, so you don't have to get up and walk around for anything — that was nice.

There's also a separate review event running with a pretty substantial discount, so it might be worth joining in ><

The basic side dishes came out, and surprisingly they gave us kimchi, jalapeños, and olives~ Fun fact: the olives are great sprinkled on top later when you eat the cheese scallops, like a pizza.

What we ordered at Hawaii Clam and what it cost

With so many types of clams and so much seafood variety, the menu is pretty extensive! I filmed it on video, so check that out for reference~ Since there were two of us, we ordered the set menu for two haha. And because I really wanted something refreshing, I picked the lemon and grapefruit highballs since they use fresh fruit~!

🍋Fresh lemon highball: ₩8,900 🍊Grapefruit highball: ₩8,900 🐚Hawaii Clam Grill (for two): ₩53,800

How do the fresh lemon and grapefruit highballs taste?

The highballs came out right away~ Visually they looked gorgeous, with a long strip of frozen lemon in the glass haha.

We tried both. The lemon one tasted like lemon-sour, basically lemonade, so as someone who loves sour flavors, I was super satisfied!! The grapefruit one had a ton of grapefruit syrup at the bottom, and once you stirred it, it tasted like a fully tangy grapefruit-ade!

The owner grills a sample scallop for us

While we were sipping our highballs, the owner brought over our ordered clams~ First they turned on the grill, and the owner personally grilled a few sample clams for us!

The opened scallops came in two types~ cheese scallops and spicy-seasoned scallops! You grill scallops like this until the meat separates from the shell — that's when they're fully cooked, so you can keep grilling to your taste or eat them right away.

Ahh... look at those scallops cooking, so pretty~ I've always only ever eaten scallops with cheese plus chogochujang (vinegared chili paste), but trying them with pure cheese and cream flavor showed me a whole different charm?!

What comes in the Hawaii Clam Grill set for two

After grilling the sample scallops, they set them on a plate for us to eat, then laid out the rest of the two-person set in a row : ) Wow... it's a clam party, a clam party!!!!!!

🐚Hawaii Clam Grill (for two) includes: Whole scallops / clams / cheese scallops / cheese-grilled fan mussel / grilled shrimp (2) / grilled squid / cheese spaghetti / corn cheese / tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes) / whole sausage

Ha... honestly I think we ate this for a solid two hours haha. Absolutely massive portions!!! On top of that, they piled a mussel soup pot full of mussels right next to the grill, so later, fishing out the mussels and boiling ramen in that broth meant we were going to burst...

Among clams, I personally love hard clams the most, but they're always the toughest to properly degrit. These were degritted well too, no grit at all, and honestly grilling them on the plate like this was even better than steaming — not chewy at all, bursting with umami and delicious. T_T

How to turn a whole scallop into a cheese scallop

(A tip from someone who's eaten a fair amount of grilled clams!) The whole scallops also open up on their own while grilling on the plate!

• Once the whole scallop opens on its own on the grill
• Use tongs to remove the top shell, then pile on cheese from the corn cheese dish plus a swirl of chogochujang
• Grill a little more and you're done

You can basically keep eating cheese scallops like this endlessly, so if you love cheese, I highly recommend trying it this way haha.

The scallop adductor muscles were nice and thick — not chewy at all, so delicious!

Among the standard cheese scallops, there was one topped with cheddar cheese, and it was so good that I dipped things into it fondue-style~

And then the grand finale — grilled cheese fan mussel — once that's cooked . . . I honestly felt like I was in Daecheon.

Finishing with seafood ramen in the mussel soup

And then, like I mentioned earlier — fish the mussels out of the mussel soup, add a bit more water, drop in the ramen noodles?! Seafood ramen, complete~★ (Tip: throw in the shrimp heads for insane flavor)

Final verdict on Hawaii Clam Hongdae Branch

Wow, there's clearly a reason Hawaii Clam Hongdae Branch is so well-known haha. Honestly, going all the way to the coast just to eat grilled clams is a whole ordeal — when are us busy modern people ever heading to the beach outside of vacation season, T_T

Still, being able to enjoy grilled clams this comfortably, spaciously, and coolly right in the middle of the city, and above all with well-degritted, high-quality clams!! If I'm craving grilled clams in Hongdae, this is definitely where I'll come back to haha.