All-you-can-eat hotpot self-bar at Gangtong Market, Nampo-dong, Busan

I'd been craving hotpot for a while today, so I headed to Sacheon Hwogwa Yangkkochi Nampo Branch. It had been quite a while since my last hotpot, so this time I decided — let's really eat until we're stuffed!

I've been to a few hotpot places around Nampo-dong and Gangtong Market, and this one had a good variety of ingredients too, great for eating your fill.

Location and hours of Sacheon Hwogwa Yangkkochi Nampo Branch

• Name: Sacheon Hwogwa Yangkkochi Nampo Branch
• Location: 7 Bupyeong 1-gil, Jung-gu, Busan, South Korea (1F)
• Hours: 12:00 - 24:00, last order 23:00
• Regular closures: 1st and 3rd Monday of every month
• For more details, check Naver Map

Exterior

As the name suggests, Sacheon Hwogwa Yangkkochi Nampo Branch is a place where you can enjoy both hotpot (hwogwa) and lamb skewers (yangkkochi) together. It's inside the alley with Bongbong Game Land, within the Busan jokbal (pig's trotters) alley of the Gukje Market and Bupyeong Gangtong night market area.

Right from the entrance, big lettering reads 'Sacheon Hotpot & Lamb Skewers,' so it wasn't hard to find at all, and the exterior had that distinct Chinese-restaurant vibe.

What are the seats inside like?

The space is split into two areas roughly — there are tables near the front where you can see outside, and further in there are enough tables to accommodate a group.

Each table has a burner for boiling the hotpot and, above it, a setup for grilling meat or skewers, so the layout was well suited to eating hotpot and lamb skewers together.

Overall the tables were spaced generously apart, so it seemed fine for a group of several people to eat there too.

Menu and broth choice

There was a wide range of dishes centered around hotpot and lamb skewers. You can choose white broth, red broth, or half-and-half for the hotpot, and the red broth's spice level is adjustable. There's also a solo dining menu, so it looks like a fine place to come eat alone too!

What we ordered

Hotpot & Lamb Skewer set for two — chose half white broth, half red broth

All-you-can-eat hotpot self-bar ingredients

We ordered the hotpot & lamb skewer set for two and chose half white broth, half red broth.

Once the hotpot pot arrives, you go grab whatever ingredients you like from the self-bar, and the variety was really more than I expected.

There was everything from various vegetables, mushrooms, tofu, and noodles to meatballs, fish cake, and seafood, and especially crab, beef tripe, peeled lamb, and blood sausage — ingredients you don't often see even at other hotpot places — so it was fun picking and choosing.

Since it's all-you-can-eat, being able to grab as much of whatever you wanted was great too. The white broth was mild and clean, good for tasting the ingredients themselves, while the red broth had that proper numbing mala flavor.

How spicy is red broth spice level 2?

The red broth lets you choose a spice level, and we went with level 2 — to me it was about as spicy as Shin Ramyun. There was that numbing quality without being overly intense, so I kept reaching for more.

Sauce bar

You can't leave out the sauces with hotpot, of course. The sauce bar had everything from sesame oil paste and hoisin soy sauce to sesame oil, Chinese vinegar, minced garlic, cilantro, scallions, chili oil, and sesame seeds, so you could mix up a sauce to your own taste.

How were the lamb skewers?

And then the lamb skewers we ordered alongside! Grilled golden-brown on the burner, a nutty aroma rises off them, and with every bite you could really taste the richness of the fat coming off the lamb.

They had a slight sheen of fat, chewy and nutty, and delicious — and it was nice that there was both plain and seasoned lamb skewer so you could pick between two flavors.

At the end, we finished off with soft-serve ice cream to cleanse the palate. After eating unlimited hotpot and lamb skewers, we walked out of there properly stuffed that day.

Overall thoughts

What I liked most about Sacheon Hwogwa Yangkkochi Nampo Branch, this Gangtong Market hotpot spot I visited this time, was being able to grab as much of the variety of ingredients as I wanted.

White broth is mild, red broth gives you that numbing mala flavor, and you can even pick the spice level, so it's easy to eat to your own taste. Especially with ingredients like crab, beef tripe, peeled lamb, and blood sausage on offer, it's a good spot for anyone who wants to eat hotpot to their heart's content!

If you're looking for a Gangtong Market hotpot spot around Nampo-dong or Gangtong Market, this place is worth a visit. It had been a while since I ate hotpot until I was completely full, so it was a satisfying meal :)