Suwon roast chicken restaurant: galbi sauce at Haenggung Jangjak

When you walk around the Hwaseong Haenggung area in Suwon, you naturally start looking for somewhere good to eat. This time, I visited Haenggung Jangjak Hanbang Tongdak (행궁장작한방통닭), near the Haenggung-dong craft street and Hwaseong Haenggung.

Suwon is famous for its wang galbi (large marinated beef ribs), and its whole-chicken street is something you cannot leave out either. But I found a menu that lets you enjoy both at once: Suwon galbi-sauce wood-fired whole chicken!

It felt clearly different from the fried chicken I usually eat, so I was curious enough to visit.

Easy to find from Haenggung-dong Craft Street

Haenggung Jangjak Hanbang Tongdak is on the first floor at 28 Haenggung-ro, Paldal-gu, Suwon, Gyeonggi-do. It is in a convenient spot for a meal after looking around Hwaseong Haenggung and the Haenggung-dong craft street.

It is open daily from 17:00 to 24:00, with last orders at 23:00. One unexpected thing I noticed when I went was the size of the restaurant.

From the bit of space visible outside or near the entrance, it may not look very large. But once you step inside, you realize that is not all there is—the interior was roomier than I expected.

It looked like a nice place to come with several people and have a beer with whole chicken, and group visits and reservations are actually available.

Herbal whole chicken slowly roasted over oak firewood

This place differs from a typical fried-chicken restaurant starting with its cooking method.

According to the restaurant, the chicken is aged for about 12 hours in a brine made with several herbal ingredients, then rotated and roasted for about two hours in a wood-fired oven fueled by oak logs.

Rather than being fried in oil, the chicken is slowly roasted over firewood, so you can enjoy the distinctive wood-fired aroma along with a clean, savory flavor.

And do not miss what is underneath the chicken. It does not arrive alone on the hot plate: there is rice underneath that you can enjoy like nurungji (crispy scorched rice), which makes eating it with the chicken extra fun.

Ordering the Suwon galbi-sauce wood-fired whole chicken

The menu I had was the Suwon galbi-sauce wood-fired whole chicken, ₩25,000.

Since I had come all the way to Suwon, I wanted something with a local feel rather than an ordinary whole chicken. With Suwon-style galbi sauce added to wood-fired chicken, it really did feel like eating a chicken dish that was distinctly Suwon.

Most of all, the food tasted great.

Because it is roasted over wood, the texture is completely different from chicken with a thick fried coating. The galbi sauce gave it a much stronger presence than a wood-fired chicken that is simply clean-tasting.

The sauce paired well with the chicken, so I kept reaching for more. Eating it with the rice underneath made it feel like a complete meal.

The scorched rice beneath the chicken is a specialty too

Personally, one of my favorite parts of this wood-fired whole chicken was the rice laid beneath it.

The part touching the hot iron plate sticks and crisps up like nurungji, bringing out a nutty flavor. With the chicken juices and sauce added in, it was quite different from eating plain rice on its own.

Taking a bite of chicken and a spoonful of the scorched rice underneath made for a really good combination. It was filling too, since the chicken naturally took care of dinner as well.

Recommended for dinner after Hwaseong Haenggung sightseeing

Because of its location, Haenggung Jangjak Hanbang Tongdak is a good place to visit after seeing Hwaseong Haenggung, Suwon Hwaseong Fortress, Paldalmun Gate, or the Haenggung-dong craft street.

There is no restaurant parking, though, so visitors arriving by car need to use a nearby lot. The restaurant suggests the Hwaseong Haenggung roadside public parking lot; if you are using public transport, you can also get off at Paldalmun and walk over.

Since it opens from 5 p.m., I think a course of exploring Haenggung-dong and Hwaseong Haenggung during the day, then having wood-fired whole chicken for dinner, would work really well.

After trying it myself

At first, I wondered whether Suwon galbi and wood-fired whole chicken would really go together. But the combination worked better than expected.

Above all, it has the distinctive flavor of wood-fired chicken that differs from ordinary fried chicken, and being able to enjoy the galbi sauce and scorched rice all at once was a real plus.

Also, the interior was quite spacious compared with what I expected from the view outside, which was another surprise.

If you are looking for dinner in Haenggung-dong, or want something a little more unusual than ordinary chicken while in Suwon, this is a place worth visiting.