Yeongjong restaurant for dining out with a baby: Pyeonbaek Hoegwan

A convenient Yeongjong meal with a baby

These days, when we go out to eat with the baby, good food matters, but I find myself checking first whether it will be easy to bring the baby along. This time, while visiting Yeongjong, we stopped at Pyeonbaek Hoegwan Main Branch, where you can have cypress-steamed food and shabu-shabu together.

Rather than starting straight with shabu-shabu, you have the cypress-steamed dish first and then move on to shabu-shabu, so I was curious. To give you the conclusion first, it is a great place to leave after a seriously filling meal because there is so much to eat, haha.

• Location: 2F, 8-11 Haneulbyeolbit-ro 65beon-gil, Yeongjong-gu, Incheon, South Korea
• Parking: Supported in-building parking available
• Hours: Daily 11:00–22:00
• High chairs available / playroom available / group seating available

The cypress-steamed dish is cooked with a variety of medicinal herbs, and the flavor is honestly incredible. I will tell you more below ❤️

A busy interior even after lunch

I only photographed a few empty tables inside. Even after lunchtime, there were group diners and plenty of customers, haha.

A meal that starts with cypress steam

Once you sit down, they first prepare the cypress-steamed dish. You simply keep the lid closed and wait until they open it for you; while it steams, you can look around the self-service bar and set up the table.

They told me not to open it, but I was so curious that I opened it and shut it right away. You really want before-and-after steaming photos... Inside were meat, mung bean sprouts, vegetables, and more, and because it arrived piping hot, the portion felt better than I expected.

We loaded up on everything at the self-service bar and got right into the meal, haha. A piece of meat with mung bean sprouts was light rather than greasy, so I kept reaching for more.

You can also enjoy unlimited Vietnamese rice-paper rolls, so it all tasted wonderfully wholesome!! There are chili, peanut, and soy sauces, so pair them however you like 😀

The baby kept showing interest and asking for some, so I gave them a bite of the cypress-steamed dish—and then there was dancing and total excitement, haha. They ate so many more pieces after that I cannot even remember how many. Pyeonbaek Hoegwan Main Branch is a Yeongjong favorite approved by a 10-month-old, too.

Shabu-shabu after the cypress steam

And the key point is that this is not the end. After the cypress-steamed dish, the shabu-shabu really begins. The cypress-steamed dish can be refilled too, if you want more.

For shabu-shabu, call over a staff member and they will set you up with the broth you want. I chose spicy mushroom broth and katsuobushi broth. Then I dashed to the self-service bar to fill up on vegetables for the shabu-shabu.

While the vegetable broth was developing...

I happily went to the self-service bar and piled up meat. Ta-da. Is it for real that I went back three or four more times after this?

Chuck flap and thinly sliced beef brisket are unlimited, and my husband went all in on the chuck flap, haha. I am completely team beef brisket. As we happily ate ourselves absolutely stuffed, the baby started to look so boredㅠㅠ

A small playroom that made the baby happy

It is not a huge kids' café-style playroom, just a small designated space, but our baby gets thrilled over even one thing like this. We spotted it during the meal and the baby was interested, so we took them over; they seemed to have fun looking around and playing for quite a while.

When you eat out with a baby, sometimes Mom and Dad spend the entire meal watching the baby and cannot properly eat themselves. Having a place where the baby can play even briefly definitely put us more at ease. If you are looking for Yeongjong shabu-shabu and somewhere to go with a child, I think this is a pretty big advantage.

After playing in the playroom with the baby, we had digested everything again, so we even polished off the juk (rice porridge) and headed home. If you are looking for a place to eat with a baby in Yeongjong, I recommend Pyeonbaek Hoegwan Main Branch for days when you want to eat lots of different things at once. From the perspective of going with a baby, the three things—parking, a high chair, and a playroom—were more convenient than I expected, which made it even better 😀