Daegu shabu-shabu lunch with rice and knife-cut noodles: Shabu20

My husband and I go to Shabu20 pretty often whenever we're craving shabu-shabu, and today we finally made it back to Shabu20 Daegu Bokhyeon branch, a well-known spot near Daegu Airport 😆

Whoa, looking at this again, it's so generous 🥹

Where is Shabu20 Daegu Bokhyeon branch, and where do you park?

Shabu20 Daegu Bokhyeon branch is basically right across the airport bridge, so if you're looking for a good restaurant near Daegu Airport, it's an easy visit ✈️

It's a standalone building with a huge, clean-looking exterior! Wait, wasn't Won Bin the model for Shabu20?!

There's a lot in front of the store with room for about 30 cars, so driving there was super convenient haha. If the lot's full, there's also free parking 3 minutes away on foot, under the airport bridge!

• 79 Gonghang-ro, 1st floor, Buk-gu, Daegu, South Korea
• Daily 11:00–22:00 (last order 20:50)
• Large lot on-site makes parking very easy

What the dining room looks like inside

The interior overall had a clean, modern wood-tone design! I didn't photograph the busier side, but the whole place seats around 190 people and the tables were spaced generously apart haha.

One whole wall is a big window, and outside you can see the trees along the walking path by the next-door apartment complex — nice and green and pretty 🌿

With fall weather setting in lately, I suddenly got sentimental thinking how healing it'd be to eat shabu-shabu by a window like this 😆 but then my husband and I snapped out of it and sat close to the self-bar instead lol lol lol

Lunch at 22,900 won, dinner at 26,900 won, and the broth choices

Shabu20 splits into an 80-minute weekday lunch course and a 100-minute dinner course haha. Prices start at ₩22,900 and ₩26,900 respectively!

Here's the broth lineup and descriptions — the basic broths, katsuobushi, spicy, and soybean, have no extra charge, while the special broths, sukiyaki and hot pot, each cost an extra ₩1,000!

At this price, you get high-quality meat, spring rolls, vegetables, drinks, dessert, even draft beer 🍻, plus various dishes at the salad bar — all unlimited, so the value is insane haha. We visited on a weekday lunch and went with the two basic broths, katsuobushi and spicy! ₩22,900 per person 👍🏻 We grabbed a seat near the self-bar and started the hunt haha.

Meat quality and what's on the self-bar

At the meat corner, you can pile up as much thinly sliced beef and pork as you want, and the meat quality at Shabu20 is genuinely, genuinely great! 😆

This one's the pork haha. At other shabu-shabu places, even frozen meat gets pricey fast once you add extras, but here the high-quality meat being unlimited is a huge perk! 💛

Next I loaded up nicely on shabu-shabu and spring roll vegetables haha. I've been studying how to pick fresh vegetables lately for making baby food, and even with an eagle eye, these looked clean and fresh with no blemishes 🥬

All of this food is included in the unlimited refills too...!

This too...

And this too... lol lol lol lol lol. Honestly the Shabu20 beef is so good I want to just focus on shabu-shabu alone, but all these other tasty dishes won't leave me alone ㅠㅠㅠ

My favorite pick is Shabu20's signature fried chicken and pad thai! I've been to several Shabu20 branches, but this is the first time I've seen one with this much food 🫢 It's tasty, warm, kept spotlessly clean, and the staff refill everything right away so nothing ever runs low — really 👍🏻

They have baby chairs as standard, plus a baby tray and utensils lol lol lol so cute I ended up piling all sorts of things onto that little tray haha. A great restaurant near Daegu Airport to visit with a baby too 🧸

Lol lol lol lol I packed it in nicely haha, with pad thai shrimp in there too — so good! 😆

There are several sauces to mix with your shabu-shabu, so you can customize to taste 👍🏻 My pick is sweet chili plus garlic sesame oil and soy sauce 💛 But it doesn't stop there...

Unlimited drinks too...

Coffee and topping ice cream are also unlimited... 🍦 seriously incredible ㅠㅠㅠ. From what I've seen so far, Shabu20 Daegu Bokhyeon branch clearly has way, way more food than other shabu-shabu spots and even other Shabu20 branches! Pad thai and all these dishes plus ice cream with toppings lol lol — there's honestly so much to mention that even skipping a few things, this is how much there still is.

Escaped the massive self-bar successfully!

Cooking the beef in the half katsuobushi, half spicy broth

The meat quality is genuinely insane ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ zero gamey smell and it's soooo tender!! Even my picky-eating husband said this meat is really, really good haha.

In it goes, meat meat 🥩 hahaha.

The shabu-shabu simmering away deliciously 🥘

My husband's pick, the spicy broth, was pleasantly spicy without being over the top, so even I, who isn't big on spicy food, kept reaching for it haha. The spice soaked into the vegetables and meat made everything even tastier 😌

My pick, the katsuobushi broth, was clean but had just the right depth of flavor, and it paired so well with the shabu-shabu! I've tried the sukiyaki broth before too, but katsuobushi is more my style haha.

I kept wrapping things up neatly in rice paper haha 😗. Since it's unlimited, I loaded up on meat generously and was just so happy ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

Both fresh rice noodles and knife-cut noodles in one lunch

This place is genuinely amazing because it has both fresh knife-cut noodles and rice noodles lol lol lol, even glass noodles too. Out of all the shabu-shabu buffets I've been to, none had both rice noodles and knife-cut noodles, which always disappointed me ㅠㅠㅠㅠ and this is even the first Shabu20 branch I've seen with fresh knife-cut noodles ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ I excitedly grabbed both lol lol lol.

I put the chewy rice noodles into the katsuobushi broth haha.

It was seriously so good ㅠㅠㅠㅠ if I were on Tzuyang's level I probably could've eaten several servings of just the rice noodles ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ rice noodles with unlimited meat, wow!!!

And I put the knife-cut noodles into the spicy broth to try both lol lol lol. I devoured everything so enthusiastically that I had no room left for porridge, so I skipped it ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ thinking back now, that stings a little.

Dessert and ice cream to take away

But dessert has its own separate stomach, so ice cream time 🍨 topped it off with some injeolmi rice cake powder I found somewhere at the self-bar lol lol lol.

Then as we were paying and about to leave, a super kind staff member mentioned we could take coffee and ice cream to go, so of course I gladly took one more cup of ice cream to go lol lol lol 😆 So happy — I properly stuffed myself with high-quality meat, all kinds of dishes, shabu-shabu, and dessert! My husband said if he hadn't driven, he would've enjoyed the unlimited beer too, and seemed a bit regretful lol lol lol.

What stood out most at Shabu20 Daegu Bokhyeon branch

• Large parking lot right in front of the store
• Great for visiting with kids — baby chairs and children's tableware are provided, and the store is spacious enough that I saw families pushing strollers back and forth while eating haha
• Way, way more food than the price suggests — with the varied buffet plus drinks, dessert, and draft beer factored in, the value is clearly excellent
• Fresh vegetables and unbeatable chilled meat quality — since this is a shabu-shabu specialist, I think the meat really matters, and this place wins on both quantity and quality
• Constantly moving, attentive staff — whenever there was something to clear from the table, they'd swoop in like little ghosts and swoop it away, and they kept the self-bar tidy at all times haha

I was so happy to stuff myself with shabu-shabu after such a long time! If you're looking for a good restaurant near Daegu Airport or in Bokhyeon-dong, definitely give this place a visit 😆