Haetan, a Byeongjeom squid restaurant: squid salad, fried dumplings

It's Jjubli ♪ I ate something seriously delicious this weekend! This is a place I want to recommend without any hesitation ♥ If you love squid, this is a Byeongjeom restaurant you absolutely have to visit >_<

Where is Haetan Hwaseong Byeongjeom, and where do you park?

Here it is — ★Haetan Hwaseong Byeongjeom★! It's located near the Byeongjeom shopping district. I came by car and parked at Jinan Public Parking Lot. It's free for 1.5 hours, so I'd recommend it to anyone driving here!

After parking, Haetan was visible right after crossing just one street, so it wasn't hard to find at all.

What Haetan feels like at 4pm on a Saturday

Go up to the 2nd floor of the building and the restaurant is right there ^^ I had other plans that Saturday so I missed the lunch rush and arrived close to 4pm. Thanks to that, I got to eat leisurely without too many people around :)

Walking in, the place was way more spacious than I expected! Lots of tables and a nice open feel, no sense of being cramped at all!

The tables are spaced pretty generously too, so it looked perfect not just for family meals but also for get-togethers with friends or group dinners ^^

There's a kiosk at every table, so ordering was really convenient!

What's on the menu at Haetan Hwaseong Byeongjeom

Looking at the menu, there was really such a variety! There are combo sets like Haetan Hansang and Haetan Dusang where you can try several dishes at once, plus meal-type menus like the signature hot-plate squid, fire cheese hot-plate squid, hot-plate jeyuk (spicy pork), squid + jeyuk, and boiled pork — and also plenty of options great for drinking snacks, like squid vinegar salad, haejangtang (hangover soup), fresh boiled squid, aged-kimchi squid pancake, and Abai-style squid sundae.

With such a wide selection, it was almost fun just deciding what to get haha. There's a lunch special too, and apparently unlimited rice refills — I'll have to try the lunch special next time ^^ I thought about getting Haetan Hansang, but it seemed like too much for two people, so

I ordered the signature hot-plate squid plus squid vinegar salad and fried squid dumplings! >_<

What's on the self-serve side dish bar at Haetan

The side dishes are self-serve, so we could freely go grab what we wanted, which was convenient.

The bar had a surprisingly wide range — lettuce, perilla leaves, dried radish strips, bean sprouts, mushrooms, young radish kimchi, rice, sungnyung (scorched rice tea), and even cold bean sprout soup.

I neatly grabbed just the side dishes I wanted haha.

The signature hot-plate squid: spice level about like Shin Ramyun

And finally, here it is!! Haetan's signature hot-plate squid ♥

Wow.... just looking at it, it's seriously mouthwatering, right?

Squid prices aren't cheap these days, but they really didn't skimp on the squid here... I was genuinely shocked!!! I love it >_<

You can choose the spice level, and they said the default is about as spicy as Shin Ramyun, so I ordered it default! It was exactly the right level of spicy, and more than anything, the sauce was seriously delicious ~!! There's onion, green onion, and rice cake mixed in with the squid, and the sauce soaked into every single ingredient so well, good good!!! The squid was plump and had great chew, so tender and springy! I can say without a doubt this is the best squid stir-fry I've ever had~~~ ahh!!!

Pile the squid stir-fry over white rice and mix it up — total heaven! A whole bowl of rice completely disappears, a total rice-thief dish >_< I don't normally love cooked onions that much, but the sauce was so good I kept picking them up too — magic!!! Wrapped in lettuce it was also amazing!!!

After finishing, I wanted to fry rice or add noodles on the hot plate, but... after all the other dishes I was too full to manage the fried rice ㅠㅠ

Squid vinegar salad: a platter of squid and minari

And the second dish! The squid vinegar salad — I actually gasped at how huge the portion was when it arrived ^^;

While I was happily eating the hot-plate squid, suddenly this vinegar salad showed up on this enormous plate... I genuinely worried for a second whether we could finish it all! (But no secret here — we scraped it clean haha.) The tangy, appetite-boosting seasoning of the vinegar salad had a totally different charm from the hot-plate squid!

The vinegar salad was loaded with squid too, and eating it together with fragrant minari and all sorts of vegetables made it so crunchy and delicious!

This dish is honestly a great drinking snack too!!!! If you like soju, or if you like beer, either one would pair perfectly with this flavor ♥

Hot-plate squid and vinegar salad together~~ even looking back at it now, it looks so good ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

Fried squid dumplings, and the best way to eat them

The fried squid dumplings came out too, crispy and packed full inside — delicious!

And the perfect pairing — dipping the dumplings into the hot-plate squid sauce!! There's just so much fun in eating plump squid — loads of it in the hot-plate squid, loads of it in the vinegar salad! Whichever dish I ate, it was all so good, so happy >_<

Lately, since I've been managing my diet, there've been things I couldn't freely eat, or didn't feel like eating — I hadn't really craved anything in particular. But at Haetan's squid, I completely lost control!! It was so good I couldn't stop ㅠㅠ It's been a while since I felt this much pure joy of eating >_<

But you know squid is also low-fat, high-protein, low-calorie, right? Hahaha. Even though I completely lost control and ate so much, I still felt like I'd gotten my protein in, so I felt less guilty, hehe. And that evening I went to work out and felt like my workout went better than usual — turns out eating well really does help you work out well! Hahaha. It was so delicious I keep thinking about it, so I feel like I'll end up going back often haha.

Dessert ice cream and the verdict on Haetan

After finishing the meal full and satisfied, there was even dessert ice cream waiting! Haha. I scooped it neatly and enjoyed dessert to the very end ♥

If you're looking for a Byeongjeom restaurant, especially if you love squid, I recommend Haetan Hwaseong Byeongjeom! Generous squid, delicious sauce, and a wide, open space I really liked. Haetan Hwaseong Byeongjeom, you really should go once~!!!!

• Haetan Hwaseong Byeongjeom
• 1024 Hyohaeng-ro, Byeongjeom-gu, Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 2nd floor
• Daily 11:00–22:30