Hanwoo dining in Gongdeok for an anniversary: 120g beef upgrade, Usu

What kind of hanwoo restaurant is Usu in Gongdeok?

Usu (우수, WOOSOO) is a contemporary hanwoo dining restaurant in Gongdeok where you can enjoy a Korean beef course in a quiet private room. I went for an anniversary and it was quite satisfying. On a special day the food matters, but the atmosphere and a private space matter too, right?

Usu serves seasonal courses built around carefully selected hanwoo and seasonal ingredients. It's not just a place to grill beef; it's a dining restaurant where you get a variety of dishes on individual plates. I especially liked that you can chat with your companions without worrying much about other guests. If you're looking for a hanwoo restaurant around Gongdeok or Mapo for an anniversary, birthday or special date, it's worth a look. Let me walk you through it, from the space to the course, one by one!

• Location: 201 B2F, Lotte Castle President Arcade, 109 Mapo-daero, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea
• Hours: 11:00–22:00 (break time 15:00–17:00)
• Birthday/anniversary perks, wine pairing, sommelier and group seating available
• Reservations, Wi-Fi, separate men's/women's restrooms, baby chairs
• Free corkage
• Parking available (3 hours free)

How to get to Usu from Gongdeok Station

Usu is in the Lotte City Hotel Gongdeok building, which is connected underground to Gongdeok Station. You can get there from the station without going outside, so access is really good. I liked that you can visit comfortably even on rainy days or when the weather is bad.

First-timers might find the location a little confusing, though. Rather than looking on the first basement floor, go straight down to the second basement floor and it's much easier to find.

The exterior is clean and neat overall. It's calm and suited to an upscale hanwoo restaurant rather than flashy. Perhaps because it's inside the Lotte City Hotel building, the surroundings are pleasant too, and it made a good first impression for an anniversary or special meal.

Usu's private rooms: good for anniversaries and meeting the in-laws?

Inside, Usu has a dark black-toned interior with soft lighting, so it feels calm and refined. It's closer to a private fine dining space than an ordinary hanwoo restaurant.

Every seat at Usu is a private room. It runs on reservations, so when you arrive they guide you to the room booked in advance. Our room was neatly prepared: a coat rack on one side, and the tableware set out tidily on the table. Once we sat down, a staff member brought water first.

Above all, what I liked best was being able to dine intimately with my companion without minding other guests. Since it was an anniversary I wanted something more special and quiet, and Usu's private room setup was great for that.

I hear many people come here for sanggyeollye (the formal first meeting of two families before a wedding). There's a door between rooms, so for family groups of 6 or more they open it up and make one big room for everyone to eat together. With baby chairs available too, it felt like a good place for an intimate family meal or a family introduction!

Ordering the Dinner B course with the 120g hanwoo upgrade

We ordered the Dinner B course at Usu. You can go from the standard 90g of hanwoo to 120g for an extra ₩10,000, so we added a bit more meat.

As soon as we ordered, they introduced the hanwoo we'd be eating that day, and I was already so excited before the course even started.

Welcome drink: sparkling wine

Before the meal properly began, they prepared sparkling wine as a welcome drink. When we said we were visiting for an anniversary, small touches like this put me in a good mood. We started the course with a cold glass of sparkling wine.

Ugye jinjuk (rice porridge)

The ugye jinjuk (우계 진죽, rice porridge) comes in a pretty ochre-colored bowl, and the plating is really neat from the start.

They explained it's a porridge made with hanwoo bone broth and chicken stock, and one bite told me it's definitely different from ordinary porridge. The broth tastes deep and nutty, almost like eating a restorative health dish. Scorched rice (nurungji) and vegetables added texture so it never got boring. For a first dish, it felt great to have something warming for the stomach.

Four bite-sized starters

The four bite-sized dishes are hanwoo bulgogi, sweet shrimp with gim bugak (crispy seaweed), scallop with clam, and lobster, each using different ingredients. The staff explain the order to eat them and the ingredients one by one.

First, the hanwoo bulgogi sandwich: hanwoo bulgogi and truffle cream cheese in a small brioche. It's familiar bulgogi, but with bread and truffle it feels completely different. The sweet-savory bulgogi plus that distinctive truffle aroma was quite a fun combination.

Next is the sweet shrimp with gim bugak. I liked the crunch of the gim bugak against the soft, sweetly mild shrimp. There's also abalone-innards rice and yuzu sauce in there, so you taste several flavors in a single bite. I think that's the fun of eating a course meal.

The scallop and clam was a grilled scallop with its tender texture, served with clam cream sauce, apple and more. The cream sauce blends well with the scallop's sweetness, and the other ingredients keep nudging the flavor a little along the way.

Last was the lobster taco. It's sous-vide lobster with assorted vegetables and sauce in a tortilla made with squid ink. It looks like a familiar taco, but using lobster definitely makes it feel upscale. All four are bite-sized so you finish them fast, but you end up thinking about each ingredient. Even though they're all bite-sized dishes, the flavors and textures were all different, which was really impressive.

Shiitake with shrimp and zucchini

The shiitake shrimp and zucchini is a dish with shiitake mushrooms and shrimp, served with zucchini, tofu, aged kimchi and more. The zucchini especially stuck with me. It was grilled until the surface was slightly charred, and that was actually even better. Instead of just soft-cooked squash, the grilled parts had a distinctive nutty flavor that I loved. Together with the shiitake, shrimp and various sauces, the combination was better than I expected.

Hanwoo yukhoe gamtae: a texture that changes with every bite

The hanwoo yukhoe gamtae (육회감태, raw beef with gamtae seaweed) was another really fun dish. You wrap it like gimbap (seaweed rice roll) and take a bite, and the sea aroma distinctive to gamtae comes first.

Then the tender raw hanwoo meets the house-made aioli sauce, and at the end the crispy scorched rice inside crunches and the texture changes completely. It's one dish, but the flavor and texture shift depending on the order you eat it in, which I found fascinating. Personally, I really liked that change in texture.

Jeju tilefish with neungi mushroom broth

Wow, the Jeju okdom (옥돔, tilefish) was really delicious. The tilefish was grilled so well. The surface was lightly charred and nutty, while the flesh inside was cooked tender.

A staff member pours neungi mushroom broth over it. At first you eat the tilefish with barley and chamnamul (pimpinella herb) rice, and then it turns into something like Japanese ochazuke, with rice and fish in warm broth.

This was a real treat. The grilled flavor of the tilefish seeps gently into the broth, and with the neungi mushroom broth it's wonderfully savory. The lightly charred parts of the surface especially seemed to bring out more flavor. Personally, it was among the best dishes of the course that day.

Hanwoo tteokgalbi (grilled beef patty)

Usu's hanwoo tteokgalbi (떡갈비, grilled short rib patty) is a bit different from the usual, served with pistachio, celeriac purée, shiitake mushrooms and white balsamic sauce. The rich meat flavor of the patty itself was good, but it was fun to eat it combined with the accompaniments.

The nutty pistachio, soft purée and refreshing sauce balance out a tteokgalbi that could otherwise feel heavy. It seemed like a more refined take on a familiar dish.

Abalone with five-color gardenia noodles

The abalone five-color gardenia noodles (전복 오색 치자면) are a noodle dish with abalone, bracken, shiitake, chamnamul and more. Wow, this one was refreshing and delicious too. Maybe because of the gamtae dressing and the mustard-garlic sauce, it's tangy and wakes up your whole mouth. After several courses, some rich flavors were lingering, and these noodles wiped them clean. It brings your appetite back up before the hanwoo main, so I thought the order was really well planned.

Main: 1++ hanwoo on a personal grill with a pot rice set

The main of Usu's Dinner B course is 1++ hanwoo grilled on a personal grill, with a bansang (traditional set meal). As I mentioned, we upgraded the beef from 90g to 120g. Before the meat came out, they first showed us that day's seasonal fish pot rice. They lifted the lid to show it and wow... the rice alone looked so appetizing. Afterward, the staff portioned it out for easy eating.

The main hanwoo is cooked on a personal grill. A small grill is placed in front of each person, and you grill the beef yourself to your preferred doneness. At many hanwoo dining places the staff grill everything for you, but at Usu you cook it yourself on your own grill, which is another kind of fun. I enjoyed watching the meat cook and grilling it as much as I wanted.

The hanwoo miyeok-guk (seaweed soup) set that comes with it is also quite generous. Alongside the seasonal fish pot rice we'd seen earlier, they prepare seaweed soup and three side dishes including kimchi and jeotgal (salted seafood). Eating warm rice and seaweed soup between bites of grilled hanwoo was amazing. The pot rice was especially good. The rice itself had great flavor, and eaten with the hanwoo and side dishes the combination worked well. Earlier we'd enjoyed all sorts of creative dishes, but the final main felt like a proper hanwoo meal, and it was filling.

Corn dessert

The final dessert is built around corn ice cream, with corn cream cheese, crumble, apricot, sponge cake and green mandarin cream sauce. At first I wondered what corn ice cream would taste like, but it turned out to be a more fun combination than I expected. The nutty sweetness of corn comes first, and the cream cheese and crumble add nice texture. Then the freshness of the apricot and green mandarin comes through, which was mysterious but delicious. It felt like they put real care into the dessert too.

What is Usu's anniversary service like?

When we said it was an anniversary, Usu put a candle in our dessert and we blew it out together to celebrate. Small events like this stay in your memory more, don't they?

I thought dessert was the end, but they also prepared gotgam-mari (dried persimmon roll) and jasmine tea. The sweet persimmon roll with fragrant jasmine tea was a really nice way to wrap up the meal.

They even took a Polaroid photo for us. It seems they paid extra attention to various things because it was an anniversary, and I was truly grateful. The food was good, but the attentive service throughout was impressive. Since we came on a special day, it was a dinner that left us with good memories too.

Is Usu in Gongdeok worth a return visit?

Usu in Gongdeok was a hanwoo dining restaurant I was truly satisfied with, from the food to the atmosphere to the service. It's not just a place to enjoy delicious hanwoo; there's fun in savoring a course of dishes made with various seasonal ingredients one by one. The raw beef seaweed wrap and Jeju tilefish were especially impressive, and I enjoyed the final grilled hanwoo and pot rice too. You can feel the care put into the ingredient combinations and textures in each dish, so I ate wondering what would come next.

Above all, every seat being a private room is a big plus. You can talk quietly without minding other guests, so I think it would suit anniversaries and birthdays, but also meals with your parents, important business meetings and formal company dinners! The staff service was great too. They kindly explained each dish and prepared the next course to match the flow of the meal, which I appreciated. Especially that day, they gave us candles and a Polaroid for the anniversary, which made it an even more special memory.

The prices are on the higher side, but considering the menu, the private space and the attentive service, I felt it was well worth visiting on a special day. If you're looking for an anniversary restaurant near Gongdeok or Mapo, a place to take your parents, or a private hanwoo course restaurant, I recommend Usu. I'd like to go back myself when an important meal comes up.