Daegu raw beef B course with 300g chadol-odregi: Bonghwa Saenggogi

Boreumi has lived in Daegu for quite a long time — pretty much half my life has been spent here. Daegu is packed with delicious food, and mungtigi (raw beef) has to be one of the standouts.

There aren't many places selling mungtigi in Pohang, and even where you can find it, you're never quite sure if it's same-day slaughtered... and honestly it's never blown me away. I wanted to show my husband Daegu's famous mungtigi on this trip, so we headed to Bonghwa Saenggogi in Bokhyeon-ogeori.

Bonghwa Saenggogi Bokhyeon Branch: location, hours and parking

• Bonghwa Saenggogi Bokhyeon Branch
• Address: 16 Gyeongjin-ro 1-gil, 1st floor, Buk-gu, Daegu, South Korea
• Hours 17:00–01:00 (closed every Sunday)
• *Specialty* Same-day slaughtered cow raw beef (mungtigi)
• Parking was available right in front of the store (we asked the owner first)

Even though it was a Thursday, Bokhyeon-ogeori's nightlife was buzzing.

A course or B course at Bonghwa Saenggogi: which we ordered

Bonghwa Saenggogi Bokhyeon Branch has courses — one where you enjoy raw beef with yukhoe (beef tartare), and one where you enjoy raw beef with charcoal-grilled chadol-odregi. We went with the B course: a big plate of raw beef plus 300g of chadol-odregi.

We were four people but were told ordering for three would have been fine too. The odregi cut is a special aorta part — many people love pairing its crunchy texture with raw beef.

The owner kept trimming raw beef right at the front of the store. Watching him hand-prep fresh meat right there outside was great to see — real craftsmanship!

Can you bring a baby? Bonghwa Saenggogi at 9pm

It was almost 9pm so there weren't too many customers, but there were two couples with babies on their backs (mine's not even one yet, but hey, parents gotta have fun too...). Bonghwa Saenggogi Bokhyeon Branch didn't have a baby chair, but our babies were already in dreamland, so we ate our meal with them strapped to us. Still great though. Whatever works! ★

Unlimited fried eggs, cheonyeop and deunggol as free sides

Unlimited fried eggs, for real? In this economy where 30 eggs cost nearly ₩10,000... We're four but decided to modestly eat just three. Two hard-fried, two soft — turns out the guys liked hard, the women liked soft.

This is next-level basic bar snacks for a raw beef place, better than a lot of meat restaurants even. They give you cheonyeop (beef tripe) and even deunggol (beef spinal cord). My friend who came along said she'd always wanted to try deunggol but could never find it in Pohang, and she ate it with real emotion. Creamy and delicious... You only get deunggol at places that handle truly fresh mungtigi, so it was great to get to try it!

Flipping the mungtigi plate to check how fresh the raw beef is

Hahahahahahahahahahaha, isn't flipping the plate over the ultimate mungtigi test? The owner never told us to check, but my husband flipped it over anyway. It stuck to the plate, all firm and springy. Truly fresh, plain and simple.

Eating it piece by piece dipped in the special seasoned sauce made an incredible drinking snack... Minced raw garlic on top with a savory sesame oil dip — no comparison to yukhoe.

Wait, what?! More basic side dishes coming out. Beef soup and tteokbokki, plus complimentary cabbage pancake. Seriously... How do they know I'm having a free-for-all today, feeding me more and more drinking snacks so I can't help but order more alcohol? So exciting, so exciting... And it actually tastes good too. (My husband ended up putting the baby to sleep, haha.)

How the 300g charcoal-grilled chadol-odregi tastes

The chadol + odregi comes grilled over charcoal, so right around when we started wondering if they'd forgotten our order, the odregi finally arrived...! You could tell all the extra care that went into grilling it during that wait.

With a faint charcoal aroma, the crunchy odregi paired beautifully with the fatty chadol. Eating only raw mungtigi can get a bit much since it's all raw, right? But paired with odregi, I felt like I could eat endlessly. Amazing as a drinking snack~~~

Ending with hangover ramyeon: would we go back to Bonghwa Saenggogi?

You can't skip hangover ramyeon... At this age in my 30s, a meal isn't complete without carbs. I'd originally planned a quick extra drink somewhere else, but we ate so heartily here it felt like a full meal, so we ended up wrapping things up right there at Bonghwa Saenggogi.

The basic side dishes kept coming and I feel like we got a pretty good value spread overall. Eating as four instead of two meant we got to try a wider variety of dishes properly! If you're in Bokhyeon-dong, Bonghwa Saenggogi is the move — I'd definitely go back.