Sokcho private-room beef lunch with parents: Seoraksan-ro Hanwoo

Where to eat with your parents before hiking Ulsanbawi in Seoraksan

I took a weekday off to hike all the way up to the Ulsanbawi Rock summit in Seoraksan with my parents. We left Seoul early in the morning and wanted a combined breakfast-and-lunch before climbing, and while searching for a place, I found Seoraksan-ro Hanwoo (설악산로한우): it has private rooms and a clean-looking exterior, which made it perfect for taking older family members. It felt too good to keep to myself, so here's my review.

Seoraksan-ro Hanwoo location, hours and parking

Seoraksan-ro Hanwoo is open every day from 10:10 a.m. to 9 p.m. with no days off, and it's right near the exit from Bukyangyang IC on the way to Seoraksan. That makes it a great stop for either lunch or dinner.

Outside, there's a really, really big outdoor parking lot, and you can park for free in any open space while you eat.

What are the interior and private rooms like?

Inside, the ivory-toned decor and a neat, hanjeongsik-style (Korean set-course meal) hall that doesn't look like a typical BBQ place hit me right away. My first impression after looking around was just "Wow, it's really clean."

The basic unit is a 4-person table, which works well for small parties, but as you can see there are also roomy tables like 8-person ones, so it's perfectly fine for tour groups arriving by bus too.

But the biggest reason Seoraksan-ro Hanwoo is such a perfect private-room restaurant in Sokcho and Seoraksan is that it has separate reservation rooms, each with a sliding door, so if you book ahead you can eat privately with your group.

And true to a place that uses a whole building, go up one flight of stairs and there's another hall with floor-to-ceiling windows and a bright view outside. For group reservations, I'd call it a must.

Menu and how to order

Since Seoraksan-ro Hanwoo specializes in hanwoo beef, you can try top-quality 1++ hanwoo in a variety of cuts. There's a table setting fee and the price per 100 g is clearly listed, so the nice thing is you can grill beef at a reasonable price!

Apart from the charcoal-grilled beef, everything else, like the lunch special and all the meal dishes, can be ordered contact-free on the tablet at each table. (You pay at the counter on your way out.)

The meal dishes and the Seoraksan set all come with photos, so you can see right away what's included, which I liked. The three of us, my parents and me, decided to order three servings of the "lunch special hanwoo charcoal bulgogi set" (₩19,000), available as a lunch special until 2 p.m. on weekdays and weekends alike.

※ The lunch special comes with ugeoji soup (dried-cabbage soup) as a free service.

Lunch special hanwoo charcoal bulgogi set (₩19,000): what's in it and how does it taste?

The hall also has baby chairs for parents who come with little ones. There are hygienic aprons set out too, so you can take as many as you want to keep clean while you eat.

Side dishes that put hanjeongsik to shame

The tidy side dishes came out first, and they were so good that I thought, "You could honestly have a meet-the-parents dinner here", you could see the care put into every single one. That day's lineup was white wood-ear mushroom salad, kimchi, pickled cucumber, japchae (glass noodle stir-fry), a lettuce salad with black sesame dressing, plus ssamjang (dipping paste), lettuce and peppers.

Hanwoo charcoal bulgogi grilled for you by the staff

Staff set up the charcoal and covered the grill, and soon a single plate holding three servings of the hanwoo charcoal bulgogi set arrived, topped with green onions and enoki mushrooms, a sight that makes your mouth water.

What I loved most as a lunch spot near Seoraksan is that on top of the generous lineup, the staff do the grilling for you, so you just sit back and eat. As a place to take your parents in Sokcho, or a stop at the entrance of Seoraksan since it's close to the IC, I think it deserves to be a top priority.

Because it's the lunch special, you get one ugeoji soup per person ordered, and the fluffy white rice looked so good too.

They cut all the charcoal-grilled beef into bite-size pieces and turned the heat down, so all that was left was to eat piece by piece. It wasn't salty but nicely mild, and it was so good that I didn't regret making this our meal before heading up Seoraksan at all.

With a piece of beef on a spoonful of rice like this, I felt a surge of energy before the real hike began!

With the soup included too, my parents praised the lineup as really generous, over and over, until they were practically worn out from saying it.

Is Seoraksan-ro Hanwoo worth going back to?

Wrapping rice, beef and doenjang (fermented soybean paste) in fresh lettuce and eating it all in one bite, this Sokcho private-room restaurant gave us a proper energy boost. The prices are reasonable, the atmosphere is nice and the staff service is just as good, so I swore a hundred times that I'd stop by again when we come back to hike in autumn, once it gets a bit cooler. That's Seoraksan-ro Hanwoo, a great lunch spot near Seoraksan.