Jecheon Korean restaurant for grilled mackerel: Deulbabae

Our last lunch inside Forest Resom

This was the last meal of our far-too-short one-night, two-day trip to Forest Resom in Jecheon. We filled up at Deulbabae Forest Resom Branch, on the third floor of Forest Resom, before heading home. The restaurant is quite spacious and has private rooms, so it seems good for a big family meal.

• Parking is available in the restaurant building
• Wi-Fi available
• Shared building restrooms, separated by gender

A spacious dining room, private rooms, and window seats

There is a 10% special discount for Resom Resort members. On every trip, we had cooked food using the microwave in our accommodation. This time, we tried a restaurant inside Forest Resom for the first time. It was nice not having to go anywhere.

I took a quick look around from the entrance. You can tell at a glance that the place is really spacious. There are private rooms too, and the view by the windows was lovely.

These are the tables in the middle of the restaurant. Since so many guests come as families, I did not see any tables for two; four-person tables are the standard. Many of the diners were families as well. Perhaps because there was a defense-industry seminar, there were quite a few group guests too—Agency for Defense Development, Poongsan, and so on.

I snapped a photo of the window seats before the group guests arrived. The view is really good! If I come back, I am going to sit by the window.

If you are traveling with your parents as three families or three generations, a private room like this would be great. The view from inside the room was really nice too. I have a soft spot for eating in private rooms... haha. Isn't it nice when it is quiet and cozy?

We sat at a table along the wall and ate. The table was wide, so there was plenty of room.

Around the middle of the restaurant, a little toward the windows, there is a self-service bar, a dessert bar, and a microwave for children.

The desserts include popcorn and puffed rice snacks, and there is a coffee machine too.

When you travel to Forest Resom in Jecheon, some families use the spa and pool with their children, so a microwave for baby food is useful too. They have two types of baby chair ready. You can help yourself to more side dishes, but the ones we were served were more than enough to fill us up.

Deulbabae's menu and what we ordered

The Deulbabae menu at this Jecheon Forest restaurant is briefly posted like this in front of the restaurant.

You can also check it on a tablet at the table, and there is a printed menu. But these days, don't you look it up on Naver Map and roughly decide before going in? Or is that just me?

The menu is divided into set menus, table meals, add-ons, children's dishes, and alcohol and drinks.

• Grilled mackerel set meal for two
• One serving of Bulgeumbeok soy-sauce pork
• An extra stone-pot rice

Grilled mackerel set meal and scorched rice from the stone pot

Grilled mackerel set meal for two, ₩23,000 per person

The side dishes came out like this: braised potatoes, tomato caprese? shredded radish, lotus root, fried carrots (I thought they were fried sweet potatoes...), pickled peppers, bracken fern, salad, and pickles.

Before the meal, I tried something like tomato caprese. On top of the tomato was a corn-mayonnaise-pineapple sauce?

At first, I thought the grilled mackerel set for two came with half a grilled mackerel each plus seasoned and plain grilled fish, but the seasoned one seemed to be kodari, or semi-dried pollock. I am not sure whether it was complimentary or normally included, but it was lightly spicy and delicious. It is the kind of fish my wife likes.

The grilled mackerel was for the children. It also came with doenjang-jjigae (soybean-paste stew), and the combination of scorched rice and grilled mackerel works nicely. We scooped out the rice from the stone pot, poured in water, and enjoyed it later.

The scorched-rice-and-mackerel combination is pretty good, actually. Add shredded radish to it, and it is great.

For a Jecheon trip restaurant, going far from the accommodation felt like a little too much effort, but eating at Deulbabae inside the resort was so convenient and nice.

This was kodari? Pollock? It was a little spicy, but even I, who cannot handle spicy food, could eat it easily. Since doenjang-jjigae comes with it, there is no need to worry about the heat.

Child-friendly Bulgeumbeok soy-sauce pork

Bulgeumbeok soy-sauce pork, ₩19,000

The menu name is Bulgeumbeok, but it is soy-sauce pork, so it is good for children to eat. It had a nice amount of onion and scallion too.

Doesn't the combination of meat, rice, and doenjang-jjigae just sit comfortably? My wife said she ate well because it felt easy on her stomach, which made me happy. We had dakgangjeong (sweet crispy chicken) yesterday, but for now, a filling rice meal still feels easier on the stomach and better than dakgangjeong!

There are so many good places to eat on a Jecheon trip, but distance matters too, right? We had eaten out a lot until then, so a restaurant inside the accommodation was really nice. Maybe people really are lazy... haha. It is hearty Korean food, good for a family meal, and there are plenty of dishes parents would enjoy too.