Korean BBQ in Siheung: fiery bul-naengmyeon at Gongdan Gamjatang

Would you believe it if you went out for meat and got a free pot of gamjatang (pork bone stew) on top? I was a little curious the first time I heard about it 😳 Samgyeopsal and gamjatang together felt like an odd pairing,, but after actually going and eating there myself, I understood why people have kept coming back for years.

This time I visited Gongdan Gamjatang Samgyeopsal Siheung Main Branch. Because of the name I first assumed it was a gamjatang specialist, but they actually serve a wide range of dishes — gamjatang, steamed bone dishes, grilled meat, pork cutlet, and more!

What kind of place is Gongdan Gamjatang Samgyeopsal Siheung Main Branch? 37 years as a butcher-style meat restaurant

Gongdan Gamjatang Samgyeopsal has been running on Sicheong-ro 72beon-gil in Siheung, Gyeonggi for 37 years. Thinking about 37 years accumulated in one spot made me look around the restaurant one more time. These days even places called 'must-visit restaurants' sometimes disappear within a few years, so it felt remarkable that this place has kept welcoming guests in the same spot for so long.

When we visited, there were quite a few other diners too, and the dining hall was spacious enough that it didn't feel cramped even during busy hours. It seemed like a good spot for a family meal or a gathering with several people.

For parking, you can use the space in front of the restaurant or a nearby public lot 🚗 We came by car too, and checked whether there was space out front before going in.

Tablet ordering and what we ordered that day

The first thing that caught my eye at the table was the tablet! Every table has its own tablet, so you can browse the menu and order directly. Looking through the menu carefully, there were more options than I expected, so even though I'd come for meat, I got curious about other dishes too.

What we ordered was

• ✅️ Meat platter
• ✅️ Gamjatang (free)
• ✅️ Pork rice bowl
• ✅️ Mot-ijeo Bul-naengmyeon (spicy cold noodles)
• ✅️ Fried rice

That's what we ordered! Honestly, when we were ordering I thought — can we really eat all this? 😂 But in the end we finished it all, even the fried rice. What stuck with me most that day, surprisingly, wasn't the meat. It was the Mot-ijeo Bul-naengmyeon, whose sauce was apparently developed by the manager himself. I'll get to why I'm talking about the noodles before the meat in a bit 🤭

A meat platter with eorigeuljeot (spicy salted oysters) — and gamjatang too?!

The moment the meat platter arrived, the first thing we said was — this meat is really good! 😳 Unlike a typical barbecue place, this restaurant runs butcher-shop style, trimming and cutting the meat themselves, and a staff member brought it out already cut into easy-to-eat pieces.

From the moment I saw the tray, the color and marbling caught my eye — the meat looked so good that I got excited before it was even grilled. As soon as the pieces went on the grill, they started sizzling and giving off a savory aroma, and that's when I got even hungrier! 🤭

At first they let the meat cook without flipping it too often until it was golden brown, then cut it into bite-sized pieces. You could see the juices staying locked in as the outside browned nicely, and when I tried a piece, the meat's own savory flavor came through first. It made me want to skip the dipping sauces and just eat a plain piece first, haha.

So many banchan (side dishes) that the grilling is half the fun

The side dishes (banchan) that came with the meat were more varied than I expected. Since Gongdan Gamjatang Samgyeopsal Siheung Main Branch gets a lot of customers, they portion out the banchan into bowls ahead of time and keep them in the fridge — but to keep them from drying out, they individually wrap each bowl in plastic wrap! They take the wrap off right before serving. Hearing that explained why they're so careful about keeping the side dishes fresh 👍

Instead of pairing the meat with just one side dish, we mixed and matched a bunch of combinations — and since the same meat tastes a little different depending on what you pair it with, I kept reaching for more. First dip it plain in salt to enjoy the meat's own flavor, then add a banchan, then swap in a different one next time — eating like this, the whole platter disappeared fast 😂

First I dipped it lightly in salt to taste the savory, clean flavor of the meat, then tried it with different banchan one by one — and the one that really won me over was eoriguljeot (young salted oysters) 👍 At some point I noticed the salt had just been sitting untouched on the table,, Apparently they used to give one salt dish per person, but since there are so many banchan and the eoriguljeot is so popular, people often ended up leaving the salt untouched. So now they give one salt dish per two people, and provide more on request if needed. Our table definitely reached for the eoriguljeot far more than the salt 🤣

I especially found the combination of meat and eoriguljeot memorable. The salty, savory umami flavor unique to eoriguljeot matched surprisingly well with the meat. Put a little eoriguljeot on a piece of meat and the saltiness brings out the meat's savoriness even more. At first I thought — eoriguljeot with meat? — but after trying it once, I kept doing it. I never expected something I always thought of as a rice side dish to go so well with meat 😋

And you can't skip the ssam (lettuce/cabbage wrap) when eating meat. I put a piece of meat on a napa cabbage leaf, added a bit of eoriguljeot, threw in some banchan, and ate it all in one bite. The crisp, refreshing cabbage, the savory meat, and the salty umami of the eoriguljeot all hit at once, and my mouth felt completely full. I guess ssam really does taste better when you're a bit greedy about it 😂 I meant to wrap it modestly at first, but kept thinking — should I add this too? — and the wrap kept getting bigger. Taking one big bite gave me several flavors at once, which was a different kind of fun than eating the meat alone.

Eating this way, alternating between salt, eoriguljeot, banchan, and cabbage ssam was much more fun than just eating the meat plain. When I wanted to taste the meat itself, I ate it plain without adding much; when I wanted something different, I added eoriguljeot or banchan; and at the end, a hearty bite of cabbage ssam! Eating this way, even though it was the same meat, I never got tired of it.

Order meat at Gongdan Gamjatang and the gamjatang comes free

But while we were grilling the meat, another pot appeared on the table!! It was gamjatang. For a second I thought — did we order gamjatang? 🤣 I already knew that ordering meat came with a free pot of gamjatang, but when the pot actually showed up, I still double-checked. With the gamjatang bubbling away next to the samgyeopsal, the table suddenly looked very full.

A bite of meat, then a spoonful of gamjatang broth, then meat again, then broth again. This combo worked better than I expected! 👍 After the savory taste of the meat, the hot gamjatang broth reset my palate and made me want more meat. At first I thought — do I really need to eat these together? — but before long I was constantly spooning up the gamjatang broth 😂 I think this might be the special fun this place has built up over 37 years.

Fried rice made in the gamjatang pot, not on the grill

Even after happily finishing the meat and gamjatang and being nearly full, we still ordered fried rice 🤣 Honestly, I assumed the fried rice would be made on the same grill we'd cooked the meat on. But instead it was made in — the gamjatang pot! 😳 That threw me off too, and I thought, wait, is this really where they fry it? Haha. It turned out they make the fried rice in the leftover gamjatang pot after finishing the stew, so it picks up a bit of the broth's flavor, giving it a different feel from a typical grilled-meat-restaurant fried rice!

The pork rice bowl that made us want more rice

While eating the meat and gamjatang, I thought it'd be nice to have a rice dish too, so we ordered the pork rice bowl (공기제육). But it wasn't what I pictured from the name — I expected a small plate of stir-fried pork,, Instead they brought out a rice bowl piled high with stir-fried pork, with a piece of tofu tucked underneath!

I assumed we'd just eat it as is, but a staff member poured it directly into our small plates for us. Tilting the rice bowl and watching the pork tumble out onto the plate was oddly fun to watch 🤭 We just sat there going 'oooh~'.

The seasoning on the stir-fried pork pairs well with rice, so it was great to have alongside the meat when I wanted rice. Dipping a piece of tofu in the pork sauce made the spicy seasoning and soft tofu go really well together. Piling a big spoonful of pork onto rice made me wonder who was the person complaining about being full just a minute ago 😂

By this point, it was kind of funny remembering how worried I'd been about whether we could finish everything when we first ordered, haha. We'd eaten meat, gamjatang, and pork rice bowl, and it still wasn't over! There was one dish I'd been curious about this whole time — the Mot-ijeo Bul-naengmyeon 🔥

Mot-ijeo Bul-naengmyeon, the fiery cold noodles the manager developed himself

And now for the most memorable dish of the day, the Mot-ijeo Bul-naengmyeon (spicy cold noodles) 🔥 As soon as the noodles arrived, a staff member poured the broth right in. Then they gave us a tip —! They said the sauce on top of the noodles could be quite spicy, so we should set some aside, taste it first, and add more to our liking.

At this point you'd normally set some sauce aside, right? But we didn't 🤣 We just mixed all the sauce in and tossed everything together.

I worried we might regret not listening to the staff once it got too spicy, but once it was mixed, the sauce coated the noodles evenly and the bright red look alone was impressive. I took a bite and the spiciness hit hard right away. But my friend, who's usually good with spicy food, took a bite and said — deliciously spicy! So I took another bite too. It was spicy, but instead of a purely harsh heat, you could still taste the flavor of the sauce along with it, so I kept reaching for more.

The problem was — it's spicy, but I kept wanting more 😂🔥 At first I wondered if we could even finish it, but the noodles disappeared fast as we ate. Then, looking at the tablet again, I noticed there was an option for extra noodles. Even though we'd already eaten quite a bit, we ended up adding more noodles anyway, haha.

Looking back, I did wonder if I should have set some sauce aside from the start. Of course we ate more because it was delicious, but there was no escaping the tingling in my mouth afterward 🤣 But when we went to pay and headed for the exit, there was ice cream set out near the door 🍦 It turns out the manager leaves ice cream out to cool down customers' mouths after the spicy noodles, haha — that's such a cute touch. If you love spicy food and visit this Siheung Jang-gok-dong restaurant, I think this noodle dish will be the most memorable thing you eat that day.

What we'd order again at Gongdan Gamjatang Samgyeopsal Siheung Main Branch

I went in thinking it was just a barbecue place, but the gamjatang came free, the pork rice bowl arrived in an actual rice bowl, staff poured the broth over the noodles for us, and the fried rice was cooked in the gamjatang pot. Each detail seems small on its own, but experiencing it firsthand made it all stick with me!

What I regretted most that day was not having more room in my stomach for one more dish, haha 😂 Between the meat, gamjatang, pork rice bowl, noodles, and fried rice, if we'd eaten any more I don't think I could have gotten up.

Still, if I go back, I think I'll order the Mot-ijeo Bul-naengmyeon again. Whether I'll set some sauce aside like the staff suggested, or just mix it all in again from the start — I'm still deciding 🤣🔥 The meat was already well known among regulars, and after trying it myself I understand why this place has been loved for so long — and personally, the Mot-ijeo Bul-naengmyeon was the meal I'll remember most.