Daegu Korean restaurant lunch booked via Catch Table: Haenyeo Sotbap

What kind of restaurant is Haenyeo Sotbap Suseong Direct Store?

Haenyeo Sotbap Suseong Direct Store is a sotbap (hot stone pot rice) and Korean restaurant on the Deuranil restaurant strip by Suseong Lake in Daegu. It comes with a 13-dish set-meal spread like a proper hanjeongsik, so it's a guaranteed hit with parents!

Today was an abalone date with my mom 🤍 Being right on the Deuranil restaurant strip made it easy to get to, and there's a parking lot too, so no hassle at all! 🅿️ There was even a parking attendant, which was so convenient — a sign of just how busy this place is 🫢

How long is the lunch wait, and how do you book on Catch Table?

We came at lunchtime and it was seriously packed... At Haenyeo Sotbap Suseong Direct Store, you register for the waitlist on Catch Table after arriving! I made a reservation beforehand so I got seated right away.

Inside Haenyeo Sotbap on Deuranil, Daegu

The moment you walk in, you're greeted by a cohesive wood-toned interior with high ceilings and a really spacious layout — I could tell right away it'd be especially popular with older guests. My mom gave it a thumbs up the second she walked in ~ 🫰🏻 There's open seating and private rooms too, so even at lunchtime there were plenty of office workers there for work lunches or early team dinners!

Overall the tables were nice and big, which made for a really comfortable meal. Even though we were just two people, they seated us at a table sized for basically 5-6!

Haenyeo Sotbap Suseong Direct Store menu and prices

The menu is mostly generous, fresh seafood dishes, and among those, sotbap is Haenyeo's signature ••• 🍚 Besides seafood, there are meat options too, like braised beef short ribs, pork cutlet, and bulgogi, so there's actually quite a range of choices!

☑️ What Hyokko ordered! ☑️

• Wando abalone sotbap ₩23,000
• Abalone seafood ttukbaegi ₩23,000

What comes in the 13-dish banchan spread?

Haenyeo Sotbap's side dishes come out in seriously overwhelming quantity, and they're all substantial too... the quality, though?! It's a 13-dish spread of seasonal ingredients.

Ugh... it's so generous it's hard to even fit in a photo 🥹🩵 Honestly, just a bowl of rice alone would probably fill you up... Cucumber muchim, acorn jelly, seasoned dried squid, salad, watery kimchi, stir-fried anchovies, salted squid, seaweed and soy sauce, mung bean sprouts, and seasoned napa cabbage! (Pretty sure this one wasn't spinach... what is it?)

▪️ And mushroom tangsuyuk! The dishes above can be refilled if you run out, but the mushroom tangsuyuk and the grilled Spanish mackerel below can't be refilled 🥹 It's just mushroom, but it's this good?? I get why people want a refill, haha.

▪️ The grilled Spanish mackerel was clean-tasting and not fishy at all, so it paired perfectly as a rice side! It especially had no bones, so it was super easy and nice to pick apart 😗

Butter-grilled abalone, the add-on order

Aaah! The butter-grilled abalone we ordered as an extra 🫶🏻 Need I say more — it's packed with savory butter flavor, so the abalone is delicious just on its own. And the abalone had that perfect chewy texture, with the innards sauce that comes alongside being the real kicker.

Abalone seafood ttukbaegi, 23,000 won

🧾 Abalone seafood ttukbaegi. Exactly as the name says, this dish is loaded with an insane amount of seafood! A hidden gem hiding behind the water dropwort, it comes out still bubbling away! I ordered this because I wanted a soup dish alongside the sotbap, but it ended up being the more satisfying dish, so I'd fully recommend the seafood stew too.

Abalone is in there of course, plus mussels, shrimp, surf clams, squid, roe, and water dropwort. An insanely generous bowl..🖤 You keep scooping and it keeps coming..

The hidden stars of this seafood stew are ✔️ the bean sprouts and water dropwort. On a base of clean seafood flavor, the generous amount of bean sprouts and water dropwort is insanely refreshing. Kind of like a hangover-soup style dish.. I didn't want to overeat but I ended up eating until I was stuffed, seriously..😗

The abalone in the seafood stew had that plump, springy texture, and dipped in wasabi soy sauce it was delicious in a different, cleaner way than the butter-grilled abalone.

Wando abalone sotbap, 23,000 won

🧾 Wando abalone sotbap. This one's all about the abalone — look at those two hefty pieces.

The rice comes lightly seasoned already! They cut the big abalone into bite-sized pieces for you first, then mix the sotbap rice well and scoop it into your bowl. ** Add more soy sauce if you need more seasoning ** They pour in plenty of scorched-rice water, put the lid back on, and then it's time to dig in for real 🥄

The sotbap comes with seaweed soup too! I was exactly in the mood for something soupy, so the pairing was perfect. The seaweed slides down smooth and has that nice savory taste, perfect as a side!

Haha, with the abalone sotbap, you have to wrap it in the seaweed that always comes with it and dip it in soy sauce! The best combo, it just keeps disappearing into my mouth..🖤 And to finish, there's coffee and slush too, so make sure to cleanse your palate!

Verdict after lunch with mom at Haenyeo Sotbap

We'd been eating nothing but intense flavors and delivery food, so I was craving a clean hanjeongsik, and Haenyeo Sotbap Suseong Direct Store was packed with seafood so it felt like a proper body-nourishing meal too — both mom and daughter were satisfied. I recommend Haenyeo Sotbap on Deuranil in Suseong-gu, Daegu! 🤤