Yeongjong restaurant with cypress-steamed lunch: Pyeonbaek Hoegwan

An all-you-can-eat Yeongjong lunch starting with cypress steaming

While I was on Yeongjong Island and wondering what to have for lunch, I went for shabu-shabu, which I’ve been loving lately. Today’s spot is Pyeonbaek Hoegwan Main Branch (편백회관 본점), a shabu-shabu restaurant in Yeongjong! It has an unusual format: you start with cypress steaming, then move on to shabu-shabu once you finish. And at weekday lunch, cypress steaming, shabu-shabu, Vietnamese spring rolls, beef, kalguksu (knife-cut noodles), and juk (rice porridge) are all unlimited, so I properly filled up from lunchtime onwards, haha.

Open daily from 11:00 to 22:00, with last orders at 21:00.

If you’re driving, you can use the building’s underground parking. The garage has one shared entrance and exit rather than separate lanes, though, so take a little extra care when cars meet.

When you enter, there’s a machine where you can register for the waitlist first.

When I visited, the interior was more spacious and pleasant than I expected.

There are tables lined up by the windows, plus partitioned seats in the middle, so it looked comfortable for a family meal. Plenty of sunlight came in, and the whole place felt bright during the day.

And I imagine plenty of people looking for shabu-shabu in Yeongjong come with children. There was a separate playroom inside! Having a space where kids can play while everyone eats seems like a pretty major plus for family visits.

Weekday lunch prices and broth choices

The weekday lunch all-you-can-eat set is ₩17,900. Weekend and dinner prices differ, and some broths cost extra. We chose two broths that day: katsuo and beef-bone mala. The beef-bone mala broth costs an extra ₩1,000. We ordered one mild katsuo side and one spicy beef-bone mala side so we could switch back and forth. Eating only spicy food can get a little tiring, so having two choices was really nice.

Pyeonbaek Hoegwan gives you 100 minutes, or 1 hour 40 minutes, at your table. At first I thought, Isn’t 100 minutes plenty? But after eating, I realized this is a place where you go in order from cypress steaming to shabu-shabu to kalguksu, so it’s best to use your time well. The cypress-steamed dish needs time to cook after it is set up, and then you move on to shabu-shabu, so rather than eating slowly from the start, I recommend bringing over the things you want right away.

What is at the salad bar?

Once we ordered, it was straight to exploring the salad bar! There were lots of great shabu-shabu ingredients, including bean sprouts, bok choy, napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, and several other kinds of mushrooms. Ingredients for Vietnamese spring rolls—onion, red cabbage, carrot, cucumber, and Cheongyang chili peppers—were prepared separately too, so you can take as much as you want.

There were fried tofu pouches and ramen noodles, along with refill broth and all kinds of sauces. And unlimited beef too! The meat is stocked in a freezer, so you can bring it over yourself for shabu-shabu. This is the most important part, of course, haha.

There are also plenty of other foods to enjoy, including rice porridge, tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes), pasta, and bread!

There are dipping sauces at the table too.

I piled up a tableful of food from the salad bar, haha.

I’m a meat lover, so I love Pyeonbaek Hoegwan for its unlimited meat! While waiting for the cypress-steamed dish, I wrapped up some Vietnamese spring rolls, hehe.

Mild cypress steaming after a nine-minute wait

You begin with the cypress-steamed dish. Once it is set on the table, you need to wait about nine minutes. After nine minutes, a staff member comes over and—ta-da!—opens it for you, haha.

What a generous spread, right?

The cypress-steamed dish includes meat, bean sprouts, and vegetables. Because it is steamed, it is not greasy and makes for a nice mild start. Personally, even when I eat my fill of something like this, it feels less heavy than a typical meat buffet, which I liked.

You can lightly dip the meat in sauce, and it went really well with the crunchy texture of bean sprouts when I picked them up together.

Starting mildly with cypress steaming rather than something intensely seasoned made me look forward even more to the shabu-shabu that came after.

Half katsuo, half beef-bone mala shabu-shabu

Once you finish the cypress-steamed dish, it’s time for shabu-shabu! A staff member brings your broth after you are done with it. This is where the real game begins, haha. As I mentioned earlier, we had half katsuo broth and half beef-bone mala broth. Mala sauce is brought separately, and you can add it to suit your taste.

We generously added bean sprouts, napa cabbage, mushrooms, and enoki mushrooms from the salad bar, then let it boil.

With lots of vegetables in it, the broth seemed to get richer and richer as it boiled!

The beef-bone mala was not overwhelmingly spicy as I expected. It had just the right mala fragrance and was good with the vegetables and shabu-shabu beef.

Switching to the mild katsuo broth between bites of mala—how delicious is that~?

Shabu-shabu is definitely best with bean sprouts, not just meat! Putting bean sprouts on a slice of beef and giving it a good dip in sauce made it impossible to stop eating.

Finish with complimentary made-to-order kalguksu

After eating plenty of meat and vegetables, we got kalguksu noodles. They are not at the all-you-can-eat bar; you have to order them separately. Naturally, they are free! Maybe because a staff member brings them over separately, the noodles seemed to be in better condition too.

It is hard for kalguksu to be anything but delicious when you add it to broth that has been simmering meat and vegetables, haha. The noodles were thicker than I expected, and because the broth had reduced somewhat, its flavor soaked nicely into them. I especially liked kalguksu in the beef-bone mala broth—it was like a spicy mala noodle soup and suited the meal perfectly as a finishing dish.

Things to note for a Yeongjong family lunch

Above all, I loved that not only vegetables but beef was unlimited. You can choose broths to suit your taste, such as katsuo and beef-bone mala, and the salad bar has such a wide selection that it was fun to keep bringing over different things. There is also a playroom for children and underground parking, so it seems like a good option when looking for a family lunch in Yeongjong! If you want a hearty spread of different foods rather than just one dish, keep Pyeonbaek Hoegwan’s all-you-can-eat lunch in mind, haha.