Dongdaegu Station Chinese restaurant with wide quabaorou: Yangbokjeom

Looking for a lamb skewer spot near Dongdaegu Station with zero gamey smell? Yangbokjeom Dongdaegu Station Branch has a retro interior, quality lamb skewers, and delicious side dishes, so if you're hunting for good food near Dongdaegu Station, I want to recommend this place. I have a seriously sensitive nose for that gamey lamb smell, and there was absolutely none here — I was genuinely impressed!

Yangbokjeom Dongdaegu Station Branch 📍 Address: 37 Dongbu-ro 30-gil, Dong-gu, Daegu, South Korea, 1st floor, Yangbokjeom ⏰ Hours: Weekdays 17:00-01:00, weekends 16:00-01:00 🅿️ Paid parking available ✏️ Corkage allowed, reservations possible, has room seating

Where is Yangbokjeom Dongdaegu Station Branch, and how long is the wait?

Yangbokjeom sits right in the Dongdaegu Station food alley. It's on the main street of the alley, so you can find it by crossing the crosswalk in front of Shinsegae Department Store's main entrance and walking straight ahead.

There's no dedicated parking lot for the restaurant. As is standard for Dongdaegu Station eateries, you'll need to find nearby parking or use a paid public lot. But honestly, can you really eat lamb skewers without a drink? I'd recommend taking public transportation instead ^_^ It's right by Daegu Line 1 subway and lots of buses, so it's easy to get to and easy to get home from!

Yangbokjeom Dongdaegu Station Branch has a green retro exterior that really pops, so it's easy to spot.

As soon as you walk in, there's a waiting board right beside the entrance. It's not through Catch Table — you have to write your name on the in-person waitlist, so you need to step inside first! We went in at 5:30pm on a weekend and it was fully booked — we were number 2 on the wait. We got seated at 6:18pm. Customers kept pouring in nonstop! This really seems to be a place everyone recognizes and loves near Dongdaegu Station >_<

There's a waiting area with chairs set up in front of the store, so you can just sit there while you wait.

Inside Yangbokjeom: no lingering lamb smell, plus the private room

What stood out about Yangbokjeom is that it's clean and doesn't smell, even though it's a lamb restaurant. I love lamb but tend to avoid places like this because I hate when meat smell soaks into my clothes — surprisingly, the smell barely spread here. Even in photos, doesn't the air look clean, with no smoke?

The place was so packed that I felt bad taking photos and disturbing everyone's good time, so I finally managed to snap this the moment someone left. There's also a space set up as a room like this. Two 4-person tables mean up to 9 people can sit here.

The hall seating was also arranged in 4-person table units, configured for groups of 4 or 8 with generous spacing. The retro green floral wallpaper kind of reminded me of the mise-en-scène from the movie A Tale of Two Sisters, don't you think?

There were aprons provided, and overall the restaurant was bright, clean, and comfortable. The customers ranged from young people to elders — genuinely all ages! The rule of thumb is usually that if older gentlemen are eating there, the food is guaranteed good, and if college students fill the place, it's guaranteed to be trendy. Seeing such a wide age range here really shows this is a place that's loved by everyone and does everything well.

Yangbokjeom menu and prices, and the 1+1 drink hours

You can order directly from the kiosk at your table. Meat orders start at a minimum of 2 servings, and there are genuinely great real-value promotions — all liquor is buy-one-get-one before 6pm and after 10pm on weekdays, and you get ₩3,000 off with a Naver receipt review.

First up, Yangbokjeom's main dish: lamb skewers. Most other places serve 200g and 10 skewers per portion, but Yangbokjeom gives you 210g and 8 skewers — much plumper than elsewhere. I noticed people ordering a lot of the flower ribs dish too.

• Lamb skewers ₩18,000
• Lamb sirloin skewers ₩23,000
• Flower ribs ₩26,000

At a lamb skewer place, the main event is the lamb, but you know the real point is the side dishes, right? Whether a restaurant is truly great often comes down to how good its cooked dishes are… Yangbokjeom is quite famous for delicious side dishes, and sure enough, everyone around us was ordering a variety of them.

• Black quabaorou ₩22,000
• Quabaorou ₩21,000
• Lamb-rice ₩12,000
• Fried rice ₩8,000
• Ok-myeon noodles ₩8,000
• Smashed cucumber ₩14,000
• Mapo tofu ₩16,000
• Eggplant dish ₩19,000

On the drinks side, everything from Chinese liquor to Tsingtao, soju, highballs, and soft drinks — all the steady essentials were there!

Honest take on Yangbokjeom's lamb skewers and the four sauces

Finally, the lamb skewers we'd been waiting and waiting for arrived! But seriously, isn't each skewer packed with hearty, plump meat? These were the plumpest lamb skewers I've ever had!

The three most healing, time-flying kinds of 'zoning out' in the world — fire-zoning, water-zoning, and lamb-skewer-zoning… They fit them neatly into the grill slots and grilled them front and back perfectly >_<

While the lamb was grilling, I checked the origin — Australian. Did you run around freely on wide open fields? Now you're headed straight for my mouth. (Brutal, I know.)

There were 4 types of sauce: salt, cumin powder, curry, and chwallyo (a Chinese chili-cumin blend). Not knowing our preference yet, we scooped a bit of each onto our plates for the first round.

[How to enjoy lamb the best way]

• Add all 4 sauces according to your taste
• Even just a light dip in pink salt is delicious
• We recommend the chwallyo + cumin, or chwallyo + cumin + curry combos

My pick was salt + cumin, and my partner's pick was chwallyo!

The meat grilled up golden-brown quickly, and dipping it in the sauce of choice, there was genuinely zero gamey smell and the juices burst out with every bite. It was so delicious I understood exactly why people wait in line for this.

I couldn't hold back, so today I went with the beer-soju mix. The drink was so refreshingly cold and sweet — you know how good that combo can be? >_<

Delicious lamb skewers plus a sweet beer-soju mix = paradise ✨

Wide quabaorou: two skewer servings plus one is plenty for two

I really wanted quabaorou so I ordered it, and have you ever seen quabaorou this flat? The portion size was seriously huge. With two big eaters — one man, one woman — sharing 2 servings of lamb skewers plus one quabaorou, we nearly burst! The quabaorou's batter was wonderfully chewy and the meat was cooked moist and tender inside, with a sweet and tangy sauce that made it a true standout dish. I heard the smashed cucumber is good too, and now I'm dying of curiosity about the other menu items.

And at places like this, am I the only one who gets curious about what other tables ordered? I kept glancing around, and so many tables were eating black quabaorou? Ugh… I was so curious. I really wanted to ask to trade a couple pieces.

I also noticed a lot of people ordering flower ribs. Especially the older gentlemen customers ordered it a lot, which instantly gave me confidence and trust. Next time I'll definitely order the flower ribs!

Is Yangbokjeom a good spot for a group dinner?

It had been a while since I'd had lamb skewers, and this meal was completely satisfying — zero gamey smell, delicious side dishes, all around great. It would be perfect for a company dinner too, so I'm going to book a room here for next week >_< For anyone looking for great Chinese food or lamb skewers near Dongdaegu Station, I highly recommend this place. A genuinely full and delicious outing today. The end.