Daehwa-dong pork soup set meals, clear vs spicy: Roman Gukbap

I went for a hearty lunch of rich pork soup at Roman Gukbap, a well-known restaurant in Daehwa-dong.

Where is Roman Gukbap, and is there parking?

Roman Gukbap is located across from Kintex, diagonal from Hyundai Department Store Kintex.

It's in the building right behind Ilsan Church. There's parking for up to 4 cars right in front of the restaurant.

This well-known Daehwa-dong restaurant is run by a chef-owner who used to work at a 6-star hotel, and he makes the pork soup and blood sausage soup with broth he simmers fresh in-house every day.

Inside Roman Gukbap and the story behind the name

The inside is fairly spacious, and despite the name 'Roman,' it feels super cozy and familiar.

I wondered if 'Roman' meant it was some kind of foreign-inspired fusion gukbap place, but it turns out it's a play on words — 'from love,' 'from the heart,' 'from good ingredients' — that's the story behind Roman Gukbap.

What's on the menu at Roman Gukbap

The menu has the 'soup' dishes that feel like a bowl of medicine, plus dishes better suited to a dinner gathering — chadol boiled pork, spicy tripe hot pot, octopus with tripe, and seasoned badger meat, among others.

Since it was lunchtime, I went with soup. I ordered the Roman Gukbap set meal, which comes with soup and boiled pork, and the Spicy Pork Soup set meal.

Side dishes and the self-serve bar

They bring out napa cabbage kimchi, radish kimchi, peppers, onion, ssamjang, salted shrimp, and chili paste. Every table also has perilla seed powder, salt, and pepper.

If you need more side dishes, you can grab extras from the self-serve bar.

Clear Roman Gukbap set meal vs spicy pork soup set meal

The Roman Gukbap set and the Spicy Pork Soup set arrived.

The broth at this well-known Daehwa-dong restaurant is simmered for 48 hours with 8 kinds of medicinal herbs and pork bones, so it's rich but clear — perfect if you like clean pork soup with no gamey smell.

I wondered if the spicy pork soup was just the clear version with chili paste stirred in, but it's clearly simmered spicy from the start — sharp and fiery, refreshingly clearing your stomach. If that's your style, order the spicy version.

The boiled pork, blood sausage and liver in the set meal

Ordering the set meal gets you boiled pork, blood sausage, and liver too, making this a genuinely great-value restaurant in Daehwa-dong.

The blood sausage tasted homemade — moist and delicious — and the boiled pork was tender; just add a bit of salted shrimp on top. The set meal composition is such a great deal that you really should try it.

How to eat Roman Gukbap in the right order

There was a guide posted on how to best enjoy Roman Gukbap, so I'd recommend following it.

Since the broth at Roman Gukbap is the real star, I recommend tasting the broth's original flavor with your very first spoonful.

It's already seasoned, so you can eat it as is. If you want more seasoning, adjust with salted shrimp, salt, or pepper to your taste.

There's plenty of meat packed into the pork soup, so it's a filling meal on its own.

There's chives and green onion in there too, and the meat in the soup is so tender that between that and the radish kimchi and kimchi, it disappears fast.

The spicy blood sausage soup was very spicy indeed. I personally prefer the clear, rich Roman Gukbap, but the spicy one was delicious too. It was a bit hot, so sprinkling in perilla seed powder to tone it down worked perfectly.

The spicy pork soup also comes loaded with plenty of meat and other ingredients.

If you dunk the blood sausage from the set meal into the soup, it basically becomes its own spicy blood sausage soup.

The broth was completely my style, so I finished it down to the very last drop at this pork soup restaurant near Kintex, 'Roman Gukbap.'

Return visit: the clear blood sausage soup set meal

On my second visit, I ordered the clear blood sausage soup set meal. Since the blood sausage in the set meal was so good the first time, the blood sausage soup was delicious too, of course. Adding just ₩4,000 to any soup gets you boiled pork, liver, and native-style blood sausage, so guys can eat until they're completely full. The broth is clean and neither the meat nor the organs have any gamey smell, so it's a pork soup restaurant near Kintex that women can enjoy just as much.

Next time, I'm going to try the flavor-packed blood sausage soup with pig's blood sausage. With such a clean broth and fresh ingredients, I'm really looking forward to it. This has been a review of 'Roman Gukbap,' a Kintex favorite worth becoming a regular at.